


In retrospect (I’d rather have been a poet. Or a farmer.)

by jasmasson



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Spy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-24
Updated: 2009-06-24
Packaged: 2017-10-15 16:46:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jasmasson/pseuds/jasmasson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“It’s in the car,” Jared said, slightly sheepishly.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Jensen’s look spoke volumes.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“What?  It was just an errand.”  Jared said, shrugging.  “You shouldn’t need automatic weapons just to go to the bank.  And anyway.  You always do the shooting.  I do the talking.  The planning.  The charming.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Jensen snorted indelicately.  “Thank you, 007.” </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	In retrospect (I’d rather have been a poet. Or a farmer.)

**Author's Note:**

> Artist: [](http://stardael.livejournal.com/profile)[**stardael**](http://stardael.livejournal.com/)  
>  Pairing: JP/JA (non-explicit references to JA/Jeffrey Dean Morgan, JA/Steve Carlson and JP/Alexis Bledel)  
> Warning: Violence and references to abuse. Sorry JDM, I needed a darkly handsome, charismatic bad guy. So in a way it’s a compliment.  
> Beta: Untold thanks and love to [](http://astrangerfate.livejournal.com/profile)[**astrangerfate**](http://astrangerfate.livejournal.com/) and [](http://halfshellvenus.livejournal.com/profile)[**halfshellvenus**](http://halfshellvenus.livejournal.com/) who had to translate it all from British to American. She’s a goddess.  
> 

[](http://stardael.livejournal.com/70225.html)  
Feedback the art: [Here](http://stardael.livejournal.com/70225.html). And you really should. Just _look_ at JDM. Mmmmmm.

***  
 **Prologue**

It was a pretty normal day in the bank, and the bank teller had been eyeing the two men waiting in her line since they had arrived as one way to pass the time.

To be fair, they were pretty noticeable-looking guys. They were both tall and lean, wearing jeans and sunglasses and the shorter one had a leather jacket on, despite the heat of the day.

The taller one had dark hair falling into his eyes and a killer smile, which he bestowed indiscriminately on his friend, other customers, mirrors, security guards and the old lady with the monstrously over-sized umbrella.

The other guy had short hair, and the most beautiful face she’d ever seen on a man. He, however, was as bored-looking and withdrawn as his friend was charming.

The bank teller would have bet these gorgeous customers would be the most memorable she'd have for a month. As it turned out, however, they weren’t even the most memorable of the day.

“FREEZE!” Four men burst into the bank suddenly, making everyone jump. “FREEZE! PUT YOUR HANDS UP. THIS IS A ROBBERY!”

They all wore masks, and all of them had serious-looking automatic weapons.

Everyone put their hands up immediately.

As the robbers manhandled the security guards and began moving around the bank, the shorter of the two men looked at his companion.

“Well, that’s just great.” The man’s voice held no fear or shock; he sounded mildly irritated, at best. “What was that you said earlier, Jared? Oh yeah: ‘Jensen, hang on a sec, I need to go to the bank. I have to deposit my neighbor’s check for her. It’ll only take a minute.’”

“Hey, she's bedridden, it's not like she can come in herself.” The other man, Jared, had a Texan accent and his voice was equally calm. “And I can’t exactly be held responsible for random acts of criminal behavior.”

They both looked sourly at the men who were now demanding to see the bank manager.

Jared turned to look at his companion.

“Well?” he asked, as if he expected Jensen to be doing something.

The shorter man grinned suddenly. It was an unusual expression for him and Jared felt a prickle of uneasiness.

“You want to hear something funny?”

Jared looked hard at Jensen, suddenly suspicious. “Actually, no. I don’t think I do.”

Jensen’s grin widened.

“I’m out of ammo.”

“What?”

“My gun,” Jensen explained with clear impatience, “has no bullets.”

“You what?” Jared was flabbergasted.

“Hey,” Jensen said, looking slightly defensive. “This is not entirely my fault. If you ever even _used_ yours, I wouldn’t run out so often. But no. This morning? I had to shoot every one of those bastards and you didn’t even pull your weapon. And I haven't had time to reload. Besides,” he put on a strong Texan accent, “ ‘it’ll only take a minute,’ remember that part?”

“Jensen Ackles, unarmed.” Jared shook his head. “Wait till they all hear about _this_.”

“Shut up.” Jensen scowled. “And wait a minute. Where’s _your_ gun?”

Jared looked a little uncomfortable.

“It’s in the car,” he said sheepishly.

Jensen’s look spoke volumes.

“What? It was just an errand,” Jared said, shrugging. “You shouldn’t need automatic weapons just to go to the bank. And anyway, you always do the shooting. I do the talking. The planning. The charming…”

Jensen snorted indelicately. “Thank you, 007.”

They both looked at where the robbers had gotten behind the counter and were pulling out wads of cash.

Jared sighed. “We should probably still do something.”

“Why?” Jensen shrugged carelessly. “The money’s insured. And now all these nice people will have an exciting story to tell their friends. More interesting dinner conversation than ‘American Idol’. Think of it as an adventure they’ll remember forever.”

“Yeah, but someone has to pay for it. Insurance rates will go up. Taxes. It’s our civic duty.”

“I was shot 5 times in the last three years in the line of civic duty, so I think I’m ahead. And I’m not that damn patriotic. I don’t even _like_ apple pie.”

“Yeah, well... I pay taxes. Do it for me.”

Jensen looked completely unconvinced.

The argument probably would have gone on longer, but the robbers seemed to be just about finished. At least that's how things looked until a scream suddenly rang out through the bank.

“Shut up, you fucking bitch.” One of the robbers was dragging a terrified female customer with him. “You’re coming with us. You’re our insurance.”

Jared looked pointedly at Jensen.

Jensen rolled his eyes and sighed.

“OK. OK.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a knife, which he handed to Jared. Then he drew out a gun. “But if things get hairy, try to remember that there are no bullets in this gun, and I’m actually only armed with harsh language.”

“Trust me.” Jared grinned at Jensen, who just looked at him flatly in return. Jared tucked the knife into his belt and then....

“PLEASE,” he cried out, voice shaking with fear. He staggered forward, towards the armed man closest to him, arms outstretched. “Please, God, don’t kill me, _please_.”

The man took an involuntary step back.

Jared stumbled to his knees in front of him, and clutched his legs.

“Please, don’t kill me. Please. I’ve got a wife. I’ve got _kids_ ,” he sobbed.

Jensen rolled his eyes. _And the Oscar goes to..._

“Jesus...” One of the other guys approached. That's right, Jensen thought, come a little closer. “Get rid of that guy and come on,” the man said. This one was probably the leader, Jensen decided. This one was his.

The first guy was still trying untangle himself from the huge sobbing mess of Jared and his seemingly endless supply of clinging arms. He finally let go of his automatic weapon so he could use both hands to get rid of Jared, leaving the gun hanging by its straps. As soon as his finger left the trigger, the balance of everything shifted. It was the opening Jared and Jensen had needed.

They moved as one.

Jared surged up, knocking the gun out of reach behind the man’s back and putting the knife right against his throat.

Jensen was just as fast. The leader was so overconfident that he hadn’t bothered strapping the gun around himself, so when Jensen hit his arm the man let go of the gun in shock and it skittered away from both of them. _Fucking amateurs_ , Jensen thought, _don’t even have the sense to hold onto their guns_. But unfortunately, now that the gun was out of reach it meant that Jensen couldn’t use it either.

Gritting his teeth, he put his own unloaded gun against the man’s head. Jensen gripped the man firmly around the neck and positioned him as a shield against the two remaining robbers. Fortunately, those two guys were currently in shock, but they were still armed and Jensen wasn’t stupid.

Neither Jared nor Jensen had gone for the man holding the hostage, for fear of startling him into doing something they’d all regret, but now that they each had a hostage of their own, they turned their attention to him at last.

“Now then,” Jared said pleasantly, “let’s just stay calm here. Nobody has to get hurt.”

“What… What the _fuck_?” The guy said shakily.

“Just let her go, and no one gets hurt.” Jared pressed the knife a little harder against his captive’s neck and the man made a strangled noise as the cold metal dug deeper into his flesh.

“N-No.” The guy with the hostage, probably thinking of a seven-year stretch at least, found a little backbone. “No," he said more firmly, "you let _them_ go, and I won’t kill _her_.” He tightened his grip on his hostage.

Jared sighed, but his focus never wavered. “Now, remember. Keep calm. OK? _Calm_. Jensen?”

He didn’t look at Jensen as he spoke, so instead it was a choked-off noise that drew the hostage-taker’s attention to where Jensen stood with his own captive.

The captive’s eyes were bugging out, and he clawed helplessly at where Jensen’s arm pressed like a steel band against his windpipe.

The man’s feet kicked frantically as he went horribly red. He swatted weakly at Jensen’s face and tried to grab his hair, but Jensen didn’t react at all, just kept pressing down relentlessly on his captive’s throat and cutting off his air while staring coldly at the man holding the woman.

Strangulation wasn’t the worst way to go. But it _was_ one of the most undignified. Jensen’s captive’s face was red by then, blood vessels visible all over. His tongue was hanging out and he made hideous wheezing, whooping sounds, as he fought for every tiny molecule of oxygen. He lost control of his bladder and a wet spot appeared on the front of his pants as he suddenly slumped, in Jensen’s arms.

Jensen didn’t release him, but instead took the gun away from where it had been pressing against the man’s head and pointed it straight at the guy holding the hostage.

The man stared at him for a moment, stunned into inaction. But when he snapped out of it, the fight had already left him. He whimpered, let go of the woman and dropped his gun. Jensen moved his still-empty gun to point at the remaining robber, but by then the last man's gun had hit the floor too.

Jared pushed his own captive down onto the floor, finally able to confiscate the man’s weapon. Then he gathered up the other three guns and threw one of them over to Jensen.

When the human body is deprived of oxygen there is a moment, just before death, when unconsciousness hits. It’s the body’s last-ditch attempt to use as little oxygen as possible in order to keep on surviving, even if it’s only for a few more precious seconds.

The man on the floor at Jensen’s feet suddenly woke up. He groaned and clutched at his raw, burning throat, rasping for breath against the damage Jensen had inflicted. But once he was conscious, he found that he didn’t actually feel a whole lot better – not with the barrel of his own gun pointed squarely in his face.

Jared came to stand next to Jensen, leaning against the counter, his body warm against Jensen's side. It was a small ritual that had developed unnoticed between them after gunfire – a few moments of physical contact that somehow reassured them both.

Jared looked down at the shivering, stained man. “You made a mess,” he said mildly to Jensen.

“He’s alive, isn’t he?” Jensen replied.

“Oh, sure – a trip to bank with no fatalities. Go team Jensen!”

Jensen scowled at him. “Hey, I did most of the work, here. All you did was practice your acting.”

“Damn good, though, wasn’t it?” Jared grinned, striking a dramatic pose. “You know, the stage lost out on a major talent when I took up fighting crime.”

Jensen looked distinctly unimpressed, but Jared didn’t miss the sight twitch of his mouth.

Jared pressed his body slightly more into Jensen’s side and felt Jensen press back.

The police finally chose that moment to arrive. Jared tore himself away to straighten things out for the cops, flash his ID and his smile, and smooth over any potential problems (or worse yet, _paperwork_ ).

Jensen waited, leaning against the desk and amusing himself by scowling and staring at the would-be robbers who were now under arrest.

Eventually, Jared came back. “Let’s go.”

They stepped out onto the sidewalk. “Do you think Kripke might let us off early today?” Jared mused. “We wrapped up a major op this morning, and technically, we also just worked through lunch.”

Jensen snorted his opinion at that, and glanced at his watch.

“He'll probably make us stay longer, instead. We’re late.”

“Damn,” Jared sighed. “Oh! Wait a minute.”

He dashed over to one of the bank tellers, who was busy being comforted and checked-over by paramedics.

“Excuse me,” he said, digging through his pockets. “Do you think I could deposit this check?”

***

**Part 1**

***

The mission had ended badly, no question – anything involving a truckload of bodies and a trip to a medical center hardly counted as an unqualified success. It all started when an error in intelligence caused Jared and Jensen to trip a security wire on the way out. After that, everything had gone downhill very fast.

***

Jensen and Jared were trapped. Hemmed in by gunfire on all sides, they had nowhere left to go.

Jensen got off a practically impossible shot and managed to take out one of the gunmen, but that was it. They couldn't get all of them that way – there were far too many, and now they were closing in. The last bullet had flown past within an inch of Jared's hair.

“Almost got an unplanned trim there,” Jensen said, not taking his eyes off the enemy. “Though you definitely need one,” he added.

“Tripping that wire just to make me get a haircut was kind of excessive,” Jared said.

He got off a clear shot, and tensed as he watched the guy stumble and fall. Unlike most people in his line of work, he hated killing. Sometimes it was necessary, but that didn't make it any easier. It never had.

“So,” Jensen said. “This is all kinds of fun, but I'm over it now; I think it’s time to get a burger or something. Got any bright ideas?”

“Uh,” Jared glanced around. He spotted salvation.

“Look over there.” Jared gestured at the truck parked about thirty yards from where they were hiding. The truck's door was open, and the keys clearly visible.

Jensen glanced over and grunted. “Long way,” he said, non-committally.

“Yeah, but I can make it. You know, Track and Field lost out on a major talent when I took up fighting crime.” Jared shucked off his jacket.

Jensen had already shot out all the lights awhile ago, and the distance between them and the truck was shadowed and dim. But it was still nowhere near dark enough for comfort.

Jared crouched for a moment, pressed against the relative safety of their crate, assessing the distance and the best route.

"I don't know," Jensen said, looking out at the wide-open space Jared would have to cover, and shifting almost imperceptibly – a sure sign of anxiety that Jared was sure no one but him would have ever noticed. "Maybe I should go. No one would miss me, and you’ve apparently got a glittering future in the Olympics ahead of you.”

Jared didn’t like the idea of Jensen going, anymore than Jensen liked the idea of Jared going.

“Nah, I'm faster than you,” Jared said, which was true, “and, you know, just generally better in all ways,” which… might not be, but made the corner of Jensen’s mouth turn up in one of his rare half-smiles. “Just cover me while I’m out there, OK? Don’t be checking your hair while I’m gone.”

“How many times have I told you? I’m just naturally gorgeous.”

“Uh huh.”

Jared pressed his hand against Jensen’s shoulder, steadying himself inside and out, and squeezing a fraction of the tension out of Jensen’s muscles before taking a deep breath. “GO!”

Jared both heard and felt Jensen burst up shooting behind him, but he didn’t waste time looking. He moved fast, dropping as low as he could to present a smaller target against the wall as he dashed through the shadows. Shots bounced around him, but he ignored them.

He ran again, ducking behind bins and crates in a dazzling display of athleticism (if he did say so himself) until he skidded over to the truck. _Made it_ , he thought. _And the crowd goes wild_.

He jumped in and reached for the keys when –

 _Bang_! The window shattered and his arm suddenly blazed with pain. Damnit, there was a sniper on the far side of the building, but it was much too far for Jensen to –

 _Bang_. The sniper toppled from the roof. Jeez, Jared grinned, how could Jensen even _see_ that guy well enough to shoot him?

He glanced at his arm ( _just a flesh wound_ , he decided), and turned on the engine. The tires screeched as he tore over to where Jensen was still crouched behind the crate. As soon as the van hid him from fire, Jensen threw himself inside it.

“You call that cover?” Jared looked at him with a grin.

“You call that running?” Jensen's tone was casual, but his eyes went right to Jared’s arm. “If I’d known you were gonna _stroll_...”

“OW!” Jared flinched as Jensen jerked him closer and probed his arm with surprising gentleness.

“Flesh wound,” Jensen assessed tightly, sitting back. “Barely grazed you, you big pussy,” he added belatedly, but his eyes were bleak.

“Thank you, Doctor Ackles. Can we go now?” Jared asked politely, ignoring the bullets hitting the van.

“Yeah, all right,” Jensen said, hunkering down in his seat. He winced as Jared screeched the car into action. “I suppose we don't have time to wait around for you to actually learn how to drive...”

***

So all in all, it had not been one of their better days. Jared had needed a couple of stitches, and the massive amounts of gunfire had attracted official attention. They’d had to go back to Headquarters to deal with that last part, and that was always a pain.

And not just in the usual sense of paperwork and politics – Jensen and Headquarters (or Jensen and anything that involved people besides Jared) was almost a unique form of torture, both for him and everyone around him. Jared had learned that the first week they started working together, though it maybe wasn't _quite_ as bad as other people seemed to think.

Jared's easy-going nature was one of the reasons that pairing him and Jensen as partners had been an unexpected stroke of genius.

No one else had been able to get along with Jensen at all, and for awhile it was starting to look as if Eric might actually have made a mistake (which was practically unheard of) in taking him into the Organization. But partnering Jensen with Jared had worked beautifully almost from the start. Jared’s calm, matter-of-fact attitude, his overly-friendly personality, and his utter lack of fear or intimidation around Jensen meant that he was not only able to work with Jensen, but that he had even managed to help Jensen adjust to his new life. He’d joked once that he had Jensen almost housebroken, and then Jensen hadn’t spoken to him for two weeks. At least he hadn’t peed in Jared’s shoes.

In fact, as a result of Jared’s influence, Jensen had even managed to make friends with another agent, Chad Lindberg (who managed all their electronics on particularly high-tech operations). Thanks to Jared, Jensen was possibly – slightly, almost invisibly-to-the-naked-eye – beginning to relax.

But not, however, at Headquarters.

Jensen never looked more like a caged animal than inside the stark grey walls of Headquarters. Jared made a point of trying to keep him out of there as much as possible, but that wasn’t always practical. Even more important was keeping Jensen out of Eric’s office, and Jared bent over backwards to prevent it whenever he could. Eric made Jensen nervous, and when Jensen was nervous, no-one was happy.

Jared talked to the administrators and did his best to ignore the black cloud of Jensen pacing behind him … which wasn’t all that easy when the group’s eyes kept following Jensen back and forth like a bunch of small, furry animals watching a big, hungry cat.

So Jared’s day had pretty much sucked, what with killing people and being shot and then battling administrative red tape. But the trip to Headquarters had made the whole thing _so_ much worse. _That_ was what was responsible for Jensen’s mood, which was growing surlier and darker on the car ride home.

It wasn’t going to make the upcoming argument any easier.

Jared pulled up outside his house and turned off the engine. He shifted in his seat to face Jensen, ready for the fight.

“You’re coming in.”

“I am not.” Jensen replied instantly. Jensen had clearly realized this argument was inevitable and so he was ready, too.

“Are too.”

“Am not.”

This was going nowhere.

“You said you would.”

“I did _not_.”

“You didn’t shoot me when I asked you, which for you counts as a yes.”

“I thought you’d come to your senses and change your mind.”

“It won’t be that bad.”

Guests moved in and out of Jared’s house, and Jensen looked at them the same way he would if they were battalions of armed men.

“Says who? I’d rather be back at that warehouse being shot at.”

Jared sighed.

“Please? It’s an important night for me. I want you there.” Jared gave Jensen the full benefit of his famous puppy dog eyes.

Jensen looked at him for a long moment.

“Jared!” The moment was broken as the driver’s door suddenly opened. “There you are!”

Smooth white arms enveloped Jared and a beautiful dark-haired woman pressed a kiss to his cheek.

“Look at you.” The woman crouched down and looked in the car. “You’re hurt! And late!” She caressed his bandaged arm.

“Sorry, Alexis,” Jared smiled at her. “Wasn’t how I planned it. I’m afraid those criminals had no respect for our engagement party at all.”

She laughed, a tinkling, golden sound that perfectly matched her lovely face. She slid her arms around Jared again before looking over at the other person in the car.

“Hello, Jensen.”

“Hello, Alexis.”

“Let’s go in,” Jared said. “I could really use some champagne right about now.”

They all got out of the car, but Jensen stayed on the opposite side.

“I’m just gonna head on home. It’s been a long day.”

“Hey, that’s no excuse. I was the one who got shot,” Jared said. “Your day was fantastic compared to mine.”

“Yes, Jensen,” Alexis chimed in, her arms slipping around Jared’s waist. “Please, come on in.”

Jensen shook his head.

“I don’t do parties. I don’t play well with others.”

“Well, I was going to make you leave your gun in the car, so I think we can get through an hour without any bloodshed. C’mon, please?” Jared coaxed.

Jensen paused, wavering.

“Yes, Jensen,” Alexis smiled, hugging Jared. “We want you to celebrate our happy day with us.”

“No.” Jensen managed a tight smile. “Have a good time, though.” He turned and walked over to where he’d parked his car that morning.

Jared watched him go, frowning.

“Damn.”

“Never mind,” Alexis kissed him. “There are plenty of other people here to celebrate with us.”

Jared sighed as Jensen’s car sped away.

“I almost had him,” he said. “I wonder why he wouldn’t stay.”

“I wonder,” Alexis said with a small smile, as she led him into the party.

***

**Part 2**

***

_The boy was hunched over trying to keep warm. The thin camouflage jacket was useless against the cold. Even though he hadn’t moved in over two hours, he knew it could still be many hours more before his prey passed this way._

_His eyes never left the small clearing, and he swallowed hard around the cough lurking in his throat. If he was good, if he didn’t make any noise or move at all, and he got his prey cleanly, he might get some hot food tonight. Maybe even hot water for cleaning up in. If he _missed_ his prey… Well. He just wouldn’t miss, that was all. _

The boy shifted silently to get a cramp out of his legs, but he knew better than to stand up. His back was still raw from last time, and he wouldn’t fail again.

There was a sudden shift in the branches around the clearing he was aiming at and the boy stiffened, his breath catching: _Maybe this time_ …

No. It was just a bird. There was no sign of the dark blue target they used for practice. The boy’s shoulders slumped and he sighed.

“You moved,” a deep voice came from behind him, and he froze, heart pounding.

“When you’re on an assignment,” the voice continued, getting closer, “you don’t move. _Even the smallest movement, even the slightest noise, can give you away.”_

_The man came around to stand in front of the boy. He was tall and dark, and, when the boy dared to raise his eyes to the man’s face, very handsome. But right now, the man was frowning._

_The boy’s stomach clenched at the familiar, dreaded sight, and he felt a wave of nausea, but there was nothing in his stomach to throw up._

_The boy trembled when the man sighed, wrapped a large hand around his thin forearm and yanked him up._

Jensen woke up with a gasp. He didn’t move, waiting instead for his heart to slow down before sitting up in bed. His undershirt stuck to his back, wet with sweat.

His apartment was dark, not surprisingly – a glance at the clock showed that it was only 04:30. Jensen turned the bedside lamp on as he got up, though there wasn’t much to see. The room was fairly bare, like the rest of the apartment, and both were small. It all still seemed pretty big to Jensen, though; before joining the Organization, he’d never had a space to call his own.

There was only one thing of real color in the room – a large colorful print of various blues arranged in asymmetrical blocks – and Jensen couldn’t take credit for it. Jared had actually bought that, after he’d realized that Jensen had completely failed to personalize the apartment even after a month of living there.

Two years later, it was _still_ the only personal touch in the apartment, because Jensen really had no idea where to start with that kind of thing, and interior design was where Jared apparently drew the line at trying out “abandoned talents,” though everything else was still fair game.

Jared. Jensen looked at the clock again and considered the cell phone lying next to it. Jared wasn't even in town right now – he was on assignment in Washington alone. Jensen had been given some leave while Jared was gone, which two days in had already dragged on far too long.

The problem was that Jensen didn’t really know how to cope with downtime. Other people probably took vacations or read books, or so he’d heard, but it all seemed so foreign. It had never been an issue before coming to work for the Organization; in his previous life, there had been no downtime.

He needed Jared here to help him deal with it, which was ironic because Jared being gone was the reason for Jensen’s time off. He’d have been happy to go to Washington with Jared, but he hadn’t been allowed on the mission. Jensen wondered if it meant Eric was punishing him for something; he found it difficult to decipher Eric’s thoughts and actions, including figuring out Eric’s idea of unacceptable behavior. Still, it probably wasn’t that. Jared had seemed relaxed and unworried, so Jensen figured he’d been left out because the job was in Washington, and therefore probably political – i.e. exactly the kind of thing Jensen should avoid.

But the whole thing _itched_. It itched to have Jared out there, alone and unprotected, and it made Jensen restless. Jensen had been a little unsettled even before Jared had left two days ago, because he’d had a prickly feeling between his shoulder blades for a few days prior, which kept making him think that there was something wrong. It was an instinct born of training too deep to be ignored. It had felt like someone was watching him, which was considerably less helpful in the streets of New York than it had been in the jungles of Angola. In Angola, you were almost certainly being watched by a predator – human or otherwise – but in New York… it might just be a bored doorman or some overly appreciative person passing by.

It was probably nothing. Probably. But… Screw it, Jared would just have to deal. Jensen picked up the phone.

“’lo,” came the rough voice down the phone line after a few rings.

“Were you asleep?” Jensen asked.

“Oh no,” Jared said, and Jensen could hear the rustling of sheets. “It’s 4:30 in the morning, what on earth would make you think I was asleep?”

Jensen shrugged, though Jared couldn’t see it, but he made sure his tone was light. “Didn’t know how busy they were keeping you in The Nation’s Capitol.”

“Very, actually,” Jared said. “I only got to bed three hours ago, and I’ll be getting up in two.”

“Shame,” Jensen said, taking care not to sound at all sorry.

“Hmm,” Jared said. “What’s up?”

Jensen paused. He’d never really gotten the hang of small talk and _Checking to see if you were still breathing_ made him sound like an overly-invested idiot.

“ _I_ am,” he said simply, getting up off the bed to make it true.

“And you just wanted to share the joy,” Jared said, not sounding particularly surprised or annoyed. “Great.”

“I’m a giver,” Jensen said, walking into the kitchen area and pulling out a bottle of water. “How’s the job?”

“Fine,” Jared said with a sigh. “Just looking after a slightly controversial foreign dignitary who’s visiting the White House even though his country’s leaders would rather he didn’t. And his lovely wife. I’m pretty sure it’s his wife anyway. Could be his daughter, I guess, but that’d be an awfully overfriendly relationship.”

“Nice.”

“Yep. Though they do seem to be overfriendly in general. Pretty handsy. My ass is _bruised_.”

“Husband or wife?” Jensen asked.

“Both,” Jared sighed.

“You could shoot them,” Jensen suggested.

“See, that there is why you’re not invited on these little adventures.”

“And that there is why I’d actually be perfect for them.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Jared said through a yawn. “I’m going back to sleep,” he continued, “I know you only called because you miss me.”

Jensen’s mouth twisted wryly, but he made his tone drip with sarcasm as he replied. “Oh sure, that must be it.”

He put the phone down and scrubbed his fingers through his hair, like it would make the feelings go away. He needed a shower.

***

 _The job wasn’t that different from a dozen others he’d done, and he did it cleanly and efficiently, as always. Morgan always said he was the best of the bunch, his words often emphasized by stroking a hand down Jensen’s back or running a thumb over Jensen's lip. Jensen never liked the way Morgan said that,_ especially _never liked where that praise sometimes led. But he hated what Morgan's disapproval brought even more._

 _It was true, anyway, undeniably true. Jensen_ was _the best of them, the best Morgan had trained. He was the best of the boys Morgan had picked up from unknown backgrounds and trained to be perfect soldiers._

_With all of the boys Morgan brought in, there was no way of knowing whether they'd have any aptitude for his missions. He was looking and they were available, nothing more. Jensen wished he knew if his parents had let him go or if he’d been taken from them. He'd only been three years old at the time, and his memories of them didn't last long. He'd often wondered who they were and where they were from. But it had been a long time since he’d thought too deeply about those questions, because he'd finally learned that it wouldn't help. It made no difference._

_By nothing but sheer coincidence, Jensen had been perfectly suited to the task – he was naturally tall and strong, and he had excellent hand-eye coordination, physical abilities, focus and dedication. At one time, Jensen remembered there being as many as six other boys with him, sharing a single small room outfitted with bunk beds. But there was only one other person now, a twelve-year-old named Mark who was less than half Jensen’s age. The others had all been lost over the years on assignments._

_The current operation was simple – Morgan had been hired to facilitate a coup in a small nation, and Jensen’s part of the job was to guard the ex-president and his family until the junta was firmly established and then hand them over to the new rulers for ceremonial execution._

_As operations went, it was an easy one, despite the fact that the ex-president’s guards were looking for them nearby, aided by a handful of U.S. government agents who supported the ex-president as a democratically-elected leader as opposed to the dictatorial junta now taking his place. There wasn’t a full military presence; Washington clearly was not prepared to authorize that kind of trouble for a small country that might or might not someday become strategically important. However, agents had clearly been sanctioned to help the president get out of the country. Jensen had seen them come through just hours ago._

_The President and his family were sitting in the small hut that Jensen had appropriated. Even though Jensen’s gun was pointed at them, they weren’t looking at him at all. Instead, they looked at each other, the young son sitting on his mother’s lap, and the president and his wife holding hands. They didn’t speak, but apparently they didn’t need to._

_Jensen turned his gaze away, looking through a small camouflaged slit in the hut to check once again whether anyone was coming._

_They weren’t._

_He looked back at the family. The father had pressed his head against his son’s. The boy was no more than six._

_Jensen tightened his fingers around the gun. The President’s wife had her hand on her son’s head and rested hers on top of her husband’s._

_Would they be together at the end, Jensen wondered? Probably not. The president’s execution would need to be public, but killing the wife and child might be done in private, possibly within minutes of Jensen handing them over when he received Morgan’s call. Possibly. It was also possible that the military rulers would tell Jensen to do it himself as soon as they were there to witness it._

_Jensen looked back outside and stilled as two men went by. They were clearly American, even though they weren’t in uniform – Jensen had overheard their communications earlier, and their voices left no question. While the U.S. clearly wasn’t prepared to commit troops on its own, it might still be in the international community’s interests to keep the President alive, perhaps to be reinstated later._

_Jensen heard the sound of crying in the room and glanced back. It was a low sound, and the family’s heads were too close together to determine which of them was making it. Maybe all of them were._

_Jensen had killed a lot of people. Hell, he’d killed the men guarding the family only today. Still… He looked over the Americans outside who were holding their position. If he –_

_No, Morgan would know. He would_ know _. Jensen vividly remembered the last time he’d actively disobeyed Morgan, and that was nothing like disobedience on this scale._

 _If he_ did _what everything inside him called out for, Morgan would know. And then Jensen… would be better off dead. There was no running away from Morgan._

_Jensen had been no more than eight when the surgery had taken place, and while the small scar on the back of his neck was practically invisible, it had tied him to Morgan irrevocably before Jensen had even been old enough to understand what it meant. He’d never seen the implant itself – only the scarred-over evidence on the other boys’ necks –and he didn’t know the details of the technology involved, but he was all too familiar with how it worked. Morgan had a control device for those implants, which could be used to trigger off excruciating pain. It was a punishment Morgan used sparingly, but he would not hesitate to inflict it for something like this. It had been years since Jensen had last felt it, but he had not forgotten: the pain was unbearable._

_There was no way Jensen could simply leave – Morgan could use the device to turn the pain on and then let it keep going until Jensen finally came crawling back. Jensen had never fully tested the boundaries of the device’s reach, but he knew it covered several miles – maybe many more. The range definitely carried much farther than he could ever get before Morgan realized he was gone. So there was no way for Jensen to run from Morgan, no real hope. If he did decide to let this family go, there would be nowhere for him to hide._

_He looked back at the family. The boy was peeking out at him from between his parents’ arms. He looked scared but trusting, as if no harm could possibly come to him in his parents’ embrace._

_Jensen looked back out at the U.S. agents, and made his decision._

_He opened the door._

__  
***

It had been over three years ago that Jensen had surrendered to the U.S. government.

He hadn’t expected to survive the experience, figuring either the Americans or Morgan himself would kill him before long. Instead, Kripke took the opposite tack. Once Jensen had explained who he was and why he’d gladly eat a bullet as soon as he relinquished the President’s family to the U.S. Army’s care (outlining the best way for them to extract without running into Morgan’s troop locations), Kripke had gotten Lindberg to jam transmissions to the chip. Jensen had finally gotten the one thing he’d always assumed was impossible: the chance for freedom.

The debriefing with Kripke afterward had seemed to go on for months, but had actually only taken a couple of weeks. Jensen hadn’t been scared, just tired. The relief of finally deciding to leave Morgan overwhelmed him—exhausted him, even, or maybe that was just the adrenaline slipping away. He’d lived with its effects far too long. For awhile, he’d even thought the tiredness might be part of the reason he’d been confused about what exactly Kripke wanted from him.

He should have known, of course. Kripke wasn’t as intimidating or charming as Morgan, but the hard, speculative steel in his eyes was eerily identical to the man Jensen had known and feared his whole life. The similarities were enough to at least be unsettling, but they should have made Kripke more predictable. Of course he’d want to take advantage of an asset like Jensen. Kripke was ruthless enough to take any advantage he could find.

Kripke had Lindberg find a way to reprogram the chip. God only knew where Morgan had acquired the technology, but it had almost made Lindberg explode with glee, and one minor operation later the chip was controlled by a new device. Once Kripke had confirmed that it worked, he had offered Jensen a deal: Jensen would join the Organization and come work for him, and in exchange, Kripke would neither have him arrested nor use those controls.

Jensen knew that the entire arrangement and everything leading up to it was well outside the Geneva Convention, but he would come to find that Eric didn’t always give such minor details a lot of concern, and furthermore that his control over the Organization was absolute.

There had been no legal trouble to worry about, since Jensen had no papers, nationality or identity. All of that was still true – when they became almost friends, Lindberg had suddenly decided one day to search for the name ‘Jensen Ackles’ in as many databases he could find. Jensen hadn’t asked him to, had not desire to really know, but in the end it didn’t matter. No record of him existed. Unfortunately, that meant that Jensen himself technically didn’t exist either, so there was very little problem in keeping him against his will indefinitely.

Jensen didn’t really mind working for the Organization – what other kind of work would he do? – but the compulsion and control chafed, and Eric still reminded him all too uncomfortably of Morgan.

Since surrendering to the U.S., Jensen had spent the first of those three years living at the Organization’s Headquarters. But Jared finally persuaded Eric that Jensen had proved he wasn’t the type to go on a mass killing spree, and that he could be allowed out without supervision. Even when they’d started becoming friendly, Jensen had never suggested to Jared that he had any objection to living at headquarters, but Jared had taken it upon himself to champion Jensen’s comparative independence.

Jensen still found his (apparently small, according to Jared) apartment slightly overwhelming in size and space, two years later. But he’d mostly become used to it by now – so used to it, in fact, that he might possibly admit to even _liking_ it a little.

That history with the Organization was another reason going to headquarters unnerved Jensen a little. The knowledge that the freedoms he’d earned could be taken away from him in seconds at Kripke’s whim made him edgy. He didn’t hide it well, either – the last time he was there, a secretary had squeaked and run away at the sight of him.

It was unsettling to know that his debriefing to Kripke about life with Morgan was common knowledge now, and that everyone at the Organization knew about his past. Jensen was equally sure the whole thing had been massively exaggerated too, though it was juicy enough gossip on its own, without any augmentation.

Jensen was a reluctant legend.

He enjoyed the freedom of life after Morgan, but he was still at a loss over what to do with it. The sheer array of programs on the television was astounding and the number of books seemingly endless, but while he truly enjoyed both activities, he preferred to be outdoors. He enjoyed sports, but only in competition, and since he really didn’t do well in team sports, he mostly played with Jared.

They were fairly evenly matched, physically. Jared had an advantage in foot speed and height, so he preferred to play basketball, and Jensen had an advantage in sports requiring better hand-eye coordination, like baseball and racquet sports. Sometimes they sparred in hand-to-hand combat, and Jensen won consistently in spite of Jared’s superior strength and weight. Jared was good, in the way someone whose life depended on his physical fitness and aptitude had to be, but it didn’t match the all-consuming training that had been hammered into Jensen since the age of three.

But today Jared was in Washington and Jensen was going to have to play by himself, so he went running instead. The task of pushing his body focused his energy, and the rhythm and simplicity were soothing. Though he wasn’t able to completely shake the feeling of trepidation that haunted him, he still felt more relaxed after a two hour run, returning to his apartment tired and dripping with sweat.

But the feeling didn’t last, not after he opened his apartment door to find Jeffrey Dean Morgan inside.

Morgan smiled, no less handsome now for the extra years, as charming a smile as ever and just as dangerous.

“Come in, Jensen. We’ve been waiting for you.”

***

Jensen’s hands twitched automatically to his waist, where a gun was tucked into his sweatpants. He was never without one – a lesson he’d learned from Morgan himself – but the movement was aborted when he saw that Morgan already had a gun pointed at him and that he was not the only one in jeopardy. Past Morgan, there was man holding a gun against the temple of another person. The small, pale form of the victim solidified as Jensen’s eyes adjusted to the light.

It was Alexis.

Jensen forced his hands to relax and fall loosely at his sides as he walked into the apartment. Alexis stared up at him with wide, dry, eyes, looking fragile next to the gunman despite the firmness of her posture.

“Close the door,” Morgan said, pleasantly, and Jensen obeyed. “And put your hands on your head where I can see them.”

Jensen turned around to face him. Morgan had hardly changed since he’d last seen him. He might be slightly heavier and more lined now, but he was still imposing. Jensen felt his stomach clench. He was _in trouble,_ and his reaction was the same as it had been when he was a child, despite the last three years of freedom.

“It’s been a long time, Jensen. You don’t call, you don’t write, where’s the love?” Morgan said as he approached.

Jensen couldn’t help the instinctive shudder that ran through him as Morgan moved behind him and trailed his hand over Jensen’s shoulder. The hand dropped down Jensen’s back and removed the gun from his waistband. Then the first hand was joined by another, feeling over Jensen’s body, all the way between his legs, over the material of his clothes, and finally making their way down to the leg holster on his left shin that had a knife tucked into it.

Morgan removed the knife too.

“Only two weapons, Jensen,” Morgan said, sounding disapproving. “And your hands nowhere near either of them as you entered the room. It really _has_ been too long.”

Jensen didn’t answer. He knew he wasn’t expected to.

“And where are your manners, Jensen?” Morgan said, suddenly, as if he’d forgotten that Alexis was in the room, when Jensen knew that Morgan never forgot anything. “You haven’t introduced me to your friend.”

Morgan turned and approached Alexis, she flinched away as he trailed a hand over her cheek.

“What a beautiful young lady, Jensen,” Morgan kept his eyes on Jensen even as he trailed his hand further down Alexis’s body. “Though I'd be surprised if you even noticed. I never had you pegged as a ladies man before. In fact, I’d say there was a fair amount of evidence to the contrary.”

Jensen ignored the insinuation, staring blankly over Morgan’s shoulder. It was a long-ingrained habit from all the other times he’d found himself in trouble.

“Does she belong to you, Jensen?” Morgan continued. “Interesting. I’d have thought that tall partner of yours would be much more your type.”

Jensen’s eyes shot immediately to Morgan’s face. It was a mistake, of course—Morgan was grinning at him, waiting for a response.

“Yeah, I thought so,” Morgan said, with satisfaction. “We’ve been watching you for a few days, Jensen – didn’t know that, did you? You’ve really let your training slide. You don’t pay enough attention to your surroundings, or you’d have noticed us before now. And that’s not all you’ve forgotten. Because I’ve been watching _you_ watch that partner of yours.”

Jensen swallowed and looked away. He didn’t need to see Alexis’ reaction—he was sure she’d always known. She’d never said anything about it, that he knew of, and Jared still seemed oblivious to the whole thing in spite of all his professional skills and training. But whatever Jared had missed had been immediately apparent to Alexis, just as it clearly also was to Morgan.

“The lovely lady and I had quite a long chance to get acquainted before you arrived. In fact, I understand she’s your partner’s fiancée. That’s got to be pretty damn inconvenient for you,” Morgan continued. “But maybe Mark there can do you a favor and get her out of the way.”

Another surprise. Jensen jerked his eyes up to the face of the man holding Alexis, and sure enough, it was Mark. He’d still been with Morgan when Jensen had broken away, and Jensen could see the boy’s face he remembered from before echoed now in the hard, scarred features of the man in front of him. Mark had lasted a long time. He’d seemed well-suited to the job back then, just like Jensen before him, but in a different way. Mark had been the type of boy that had enjoyed torturing small animals and had taken naturally to the violence, even as young as he’d been back then.

“Or not,” Morgan continued. “We’ll see. It’s probably smarter for us to continue this conversation somewhere else anyway. Jensen, turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

Jensen obeyed slowly, turning his back on Morgan despite all his instincts’ warnings not to, and crossed his wrists at his lower back. He stayed still while Morgan took his wrists and clasped handcuffs on them, tightly. He remained still when Morgan took off his own jacket and threw it casually over Jensen’s shoulders to cover up the sight of his handcuffed arms. The scent made Jensen shiver. Morgan’s soap was apparently still the same as it had always been, and when coupled with Morgan’s other usual smells of leather and gun oil, it provided a sense memory so strong that it almost made Jensen’s knees buckle from all the negative associations.

“Now, everyone do the smart thing here and stay calm, and we’ll be on our way,” Morgan said, reaching in front of Jensen to open the front door. Jensen heard a low muttering behind him, and craned his neck around to see Mark pushing Alexis to the door. One of Mark’s hands gripped Alexis’s arm firmly, and the other was in his jacket pocket. The outline of the gun was clearly visible to Jensen’s eye, but it probably wouldn’t attract anyone else’s attention.

Jensen had always thought the agents’ apartments could have used more security. But it was no comfort to be proven right when the four of them left the apartment without any trouble and got into the car waiting outside.

Mark pushed Alexis into the passenger seat and handcuffed her, and took the driver’s seat for himself. Jensen sat behind Alexis, with Morgan beside him. Morgan was holding his gun again, and now he ran it slowly down Jensen’s cheek.

“I suppose you’re wondering what I’m doing here. I might’ve just wanted to call on an old friend, but you’re right, I’m probably here for something else. You see, I heard you were still alive, and I thought, _I’ve got to come and visit my boy Jensen._ I mean hell, I gave you up for dead back then, thought you’d fallen on your sword after you didn’t come when I… called.”

Morgan pulled the familiar controller from his pocket. Jensen broke out into a sweat and automatically flinched when Morgan flicked the controls, but they had no effect – none of the agonizing pain he expected went tearing from his skull down through his body.

“I knew you didn’t have the smarts to circumvent that little gadget yourself. I taught you a lot of skills, but science wasn’t one of them. And let’s face it, your list of friends was a total zero, so I couldn’t imagine you’d found someone else to do it for you. Who would help a murdering mercenary with that kind of thing anyway?

“Of course, I should have realized the U.S. government would appreciate an operative like you, assuming they didn’t jail your ass for a decade. But until an associate of mine said you’d broken up a bank raid a few months ago, I had no idea you’d come out of the whole thing on your feet.”

Jensen frowned, remembering the incident, and for the first time he met Morgan’s eyes completely.

“None of those men were yours,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

Morgan smiled. “No, not mine. I do have to round up some hired muscle from time-to-time, though, and he’d seen a video of your training during his brief employment. And we both know how memorable you’ve always been.”

Jensen tried not to think about what might have been on that ‘training’ video, and hoped it was just footage of him running through drills.

“The man was sharp enough to think I might help out a little with his legal fees in exchange for information on your whereabouts.” Morgan smiled. “I didn’t believe him at first, of course, but it turned out he was telling the truth. Good thing I followed up on his intel afterward. I’d apologize for the lack of faith, but it wouldn’t make much difference. I hear he ran into some trouble recently in prison and didn’t make it through.” Morgan shook his head with feigned sadness. “My mistake.”

“But now we’re here,” Morgan continued brightly, “old friends, together again. And you can’t beat the timing, with Ms. Bledel joining us—talk about your lucky accidents. I think this is all going to work out just fine.”

“What?” Jensen asked, tired of Morgan’s games. “What do you want?”

Morgan smiled again, an expression all too familiar to Jensen, full of charm and malice and heat. “Are you sure you really want to get to that part so soon? You never used to be so eager.”

Jensen clenched his teeth, swallowed and looked away, his heart beating faster in his chest and his hands balled into helpless fists behind his back.

“I’m not really sure what I want, Jensen, I have to admit.” Jensen didn’t really believe that, because Jeffrey Dean Morgan was never without a plan. “The original plan was to just find you and kill you…"

Jensen nodded. He’d expected that.

“After we’d had a little talk, of course. After you’d come to really see the _error of your ways_ , of course? But you know,” Morgan said, throwing a companionable arm over Jensen’s shoulder, “now that I’ve seen you again, I wonder if I might’ve been rushing things. I hadn’t planned on recruiting you again, Jensen, ‘cause after all, if you can slip away once, you can do it again. But then I thought, maybe if we kept a slightly tighter leash on you this time...” Morgan’s hand clenched Jensen’s t-shirt and pulled it tight around Jensen’s throat, cutting off his air for a moment. “Yeah, maybe with a nice, tight leash on you, the whole thing just might work out.”

Jensen said nothing, just drew in a large gulp of air when Morgan released his shirt.

“Yeah,” Morgan said and sat back, looking satisfied. “I think that just might do the trick.”

***

Jensen tracked the route they took in his mind, a little concerned that Morgan wasn’t taking any precautions in letting him see where they were going.

It wasn’t far, about ten miles, tops. They drove into a large warehouse, and then parked. Morgan and Mark helped both Jensen and Alexis out of the car, and Alexis was tied to a chair and efficiently gagged. Jensen was left standing in the middle of the room, hands still cuffed behind his back.

“Well,” Morgan said with a cagey smile, “time to step up and make the big decision. You could come back into the fold with us, get reacquainted with the family. How about that?”

Jensen looked him in the eye. “I think I’ll pass.”

“That so?” Morgan didn’t seem particularly disappointed. “Well, I think maybe you’re imagining you have more of a choice than you actually do. Would you honestly rather die? You’ve done so much in the name of staying alive – let alone the things you’ve done just to stay _in my good books_ – would you really give up and choose death now instead of going back to the job you’re trained for?”

Jensen looked away, not able to deny the truth of Morgan’s words.

“How about this, instead: I don’t think you really do want to die. If you come with us now, I’m sure you’ll eventually see that doing the job you were made for is far better than death. I’ll call an old friend of mine to reactivate the chip, and then you can stay nice and close to me so we can be sure you don’t _accidentally_ deactivate it again.”

“Fuck you,” Jensen said, but his voice was weak. Trapped under Morgan’s attentions for a long period of time, it was entirely possible that he might once again find the ability to do what Morgan labeled ‘his job’.

“We got to talking, this lovely lady and I, while we were waiting for you,” Morgan said. “She happened to mention an important secret. Did you know she was pregnant?”

Jensen gasped, and jerked his head to stare at Alexis who was staring back, transfixed by the sight of them.

“I see you didn’t!” Morgan exclaimed. “Well, the cat’s out of the bag now.” He pointed his gun over at her. “How about this? We’ll see if you remember some of the more… _personal_ skills I taught you, and in exchange I’ll let your partner’s future wife and child go free.”

Jensen swallowed, his throat seizing up as Morgan let his gaze fall deliberately on his lips. He knew better than to believe Morgan, but he also knew there was absolutely no way he wouldn’t do whatever Morgan wanted when Jared’s fiancée’s life, and his _child’s_ life, hung in the balance.

Morgan laughed, and clapped him on the back. “It’ll be great having you back again. Mark here has many fine qualities, but prettiness isn’t one of them. He’s worked hard to match you on almost everything, but there was never really any hope on that score.

“I’ll leave you to think about that while I get some transport together. I think the sooner we head on out and you start working on your ‘refresher course’, the better. Want to make sure you haven’t lost too many of your other skills while you’ve been gone.”

Morgan turned away, and threw his gun to Mark, who caught it deftly in his free hand and turned it immediately on Jensen, his face unreadable. “Watch him,” he said to Mark. “If he tries anything, shoot him in the leg. But don’t kill him.”

Morgan trailed his fingers over Jensen’s lips as he walked by on the way out, laughing softly when Jensen jerked his face away.

Morgan closed the door behind him.

Jensen turned back to face Mark, and was shocked at the wholly unexpected sight of Mark carefully putting down both of the guns.

When he turned to face Jensen, Mark’s face was filled with an unholy glee, and Jensen was horrified to imagine what thoughts Morgan’s insinuations might have suddenly put into his head.

“Mark,” he started, “you don’t have to do this. I can find someone to reprogram your chip. They did mine in just a couple of days. They’ll even keep you unconscious until the chip’s reprogrammed so you don’t have to suffer at all.”

Mark approached him closely, and Jensen held his ground.

“You don’t understand,” Mark said, and his voice was rough and stilted, probably from lack of use. A weapon didn’t need to talk. “You never have. I don’t _want_ to lose my chip.”

Jensen’s heart sank. He’d suspected as much – Mark had always seemed to enjoy being right where he was.

“I would never be ungrateful to Morgan the way you were. I would never hurt him by leaving him. You broke his heart when you left.”

If Jensen knew anything, he knew that last part wasn’t true. Morgan’s heart had no function other than to pump blood through his body – it had no place in his business.

“He doesn’t care about you, Mark,” he said, desperately but he knew, God he knew, how difficult it was to break free from Morgan’s lies.

“He does,” Mark said, and now that he was closer Jensen could see the light of fanaticism in his eyes. It made a cold sweat broke out on his brow. “He does," Mark continued. "I tried to make it up to him when you left, but I couldn’t. I tried to be as good as you, but it was never enough for him.”

Jensen couldn’t say whether that matched the reality of the situation, but he saw instantly how Morgan could and would have used Jensen to manipulate Mark, holding him out as a distant but always nearly-obtainable goal to strive for. The example of Jensen would have been a constant source of motivation and punishment. And Morgan’s punishments had always made a lasing impression.

“But now I can prove it!” Mark said, a glimmer of passion in his eyes. “I can prove I’m just as good as you. Better!”

Mark pulled a set of handcuff keys out of his pocket. Reaching behind Jensen, he placed them in his hands and then stepped back. Realizing his opportunity, and unable to believe his luck, Jensen fumbled the keys into position behind his back and unlocked the cuffs.

Mark was bouncing on his feet, standing slightly to one side, his arms held loosely by his sides. Jensen looked at the fervor in his face and was sickened once again by Morgan’s ability to control people. He’d made this man want to prove himself so badly that Mark was willing to risk Morgan’s wrath by killing Jensen. Jensen remembered that feeling himself, when he would have done anything just to get Morgan to look at him with approval. But Jensen had always been motivated by fear. It seemed Morgan had found a different button to push for Mark, one that was every bit as effective.

Jensen got into position just in time to duck the first punch Mark threw at his head. Jensen danced out of the way, but Mark was breathlessly fast with his follow-up. This time he caught Jensen with a kick to the shin that nearly took his leg out from him, forcing him to rebalance with a jump that he quickly converted into a kick at Mark’s thigh.

It was on.

As they danced around each other, fighting in a small circle over the two guns on the floor, Jensen realized how evenly they were matched. From the earliest of ages, they’d both had the most extensive combat training available, and they’d both been highly motivated to learn their lessons well.

Mark was younger but Jensen was stronger, and (he thought as they traded ringing blows to the head) he might also be more naturally gifted. But Mark was still consistently at that peak of training, his skills as honed as they could be. By contrast, Jensen’s new life – as physically demanding as it was – rarely called for him to genuinely use the full extent of his hand-to-hand expertise.

They were both, of course, desperately committed to the fight. They were both fighting for their lives now, and while Mark was spurred on by the desire for Morgan’s approval, Jensen was driven by the need to make sure Jared’s fiancée and child survived. Neither man could possibly want it more.

Jensen’s lip was bleeding heavily and his ears were buzzing, and Mark’s forehead had just been gashed open on a rolling fall when Morgan came back in.

“Stop!” he yelled, and they both paused for a moment, their training too deeply ingrained to keep from obeying. But it couldn’t last – they both wanted it too much – and Jensen wasn’t sure who’d started again first, but suddenly they were back at it with renewed fury.

Jensen now had to concentrate on keeping close to the guns to make sure Morgan couldn’t get to them, as well as fighting Mark.

Morgan circled the fight, and suddenly started talking.

“Maybe this is all for the best,” Morgan said, moving around them, his voice silky and insidious. “Maybe this is where the hand of fate comes into play. This way, I can be sure which one of you really is the best. Maybe I’ve been looking at the past with rose-colored glasses all this time, completely blind to the truth. Maybe Jensen was never really as good as I thought he was, and Mark is actually the one who’s better.”

Jensen rolled with a punch, lashing out a kick, and suddenly the years started dropping away. The heavy thudding of his heart, the smooth movements of his body, the mindless instinct of combat all came back to him, and the pain when his opponent landed a hit was overlaid (always overlaid, like so many years before) by the sound of Morgan’s voice.

“Try harder now,” Morgan said in a warning tone, and Jensen forgot to even care which one of them he was talking to.

The compulsion to listen to that voice and to obey it was ingrained in him. Everything from a whip on his back to the violation of his body, from gnawing hunger in his empty gut to the raw burning of his throat as he ran drills with no water in the torturous heat for hours and hours… the years fell away like nothing, and Morgan’s voice drove him on as surely as any other reasons he had for winning.

It was the smallest of slips that decided it, an overextension of the arm, an over-commitment to the blow, that allowed Jensen to roll with the punch and get behind his opponent’s shoulder and grab his head. He maneuvered his body into position to prevent the solid mass of Mark’s body from moving with his neck, and held on through the horrible crack that signaled the end.

Jensen dropped the lifeless body and his eyes settled on the guns. The prize. He swooped down and picked one up.

“Well done,” a voice said softly and Jensen turned instinctively, pointing the gun at the noise.

Morgan’s face and voice showed no fear.

“Nice work, Jensen, you’ve proved yourself once again.” Morgan’s voice was rich and sonorous with praise. Jensen shivered in relief – he’d done well.

“Now,” Morgan continued, “give me the gun. Give me the gun and your job is finished.”

Jensen hesitated. That wasn’t… No, that wasn’t right. He gripped the gun tighter and kept it pointed at Morgan.

Morgan paused, shifting his weight back to where it had started.

“Are you going to kill me?” Morgan asked.

Jensen’s hand shook a little.

“You could always have killed me, you know,” Morgan said, his voice tense but still sounding slightly amused. “Since you were, what, fourteen maybe? I held nothing back. I trained you in every possible aspect of the art of war, gave you the best teachers in martial arts, weaponry and fitness. You were a perfect killing machine, and yet I’ll bet it never even occurred to you to kill me and take control for yourself.

“You couldn’t have removed the chip in your head, of course, but with me gone and the control destroyed no one else would have known how to activate it and you could have been free.”

Morgan smiled, moving closer to Jensen, whose hands were shaking a little with the effort of keeping the gun steady while some of the blows he’d taken were still ringing in his ears.

“Though I can’t fool myself that you stayed because you wanted to. Those sweet tears of yours back then, the pain you tried to hide, they all said otherwise. You stayed because you were too scared of me to leave, and that’s the truth, just like you’re too scared to pull the trigger now. A lifetime of conditioning keeps you from doing it. You can never escape what I am to you, and that was my own gift, in a way. The power of control. I gave you all the gifts of physical prowess you could ever hope for, but I actually gave them to myself because if they were yours then they always really belonged to me. Just like you do.

“If you put the gun down, I won’t be angry with you, Jensen. You won’t have to be punished. You can come home with me and I’ll take care of you, and your pretty partner’s pretty little wife can go back to planning her wedding.”

Jensen’s eyes had been unfocused and his breathing labored as he’d listened to Morgan’s low voice, but he suddenly snapped to attention at the mention of Jared.

Morgan stopped talking as he realized his mistake, all too late.

“You don’t control me,” Jensen said firmly, bringing the gun up to point directly at Morgan’s heart. “I got away from you. And you know what? I got _all the way_ away from you.”

And with the power of that whole horrible history behind him, he pulled the trigger.

Jensen watched, unable to untangle the web of conflicting emotions as he saw Morgan’s face crumple for a moment in pain, and then clear forever.

He stared at Morgan’s body for a long moment, and then the adrenaline seemed to leave him. His knees gave out, and he crumpled to the floor.

***

“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?” Alexis asked, sounding worried, as they stood outside by Morgan’s car. “You’ve taken a few blows to the head. Lost some blood.”

“Just get in,” Jensen gritted out from between clenched teeth, and Alexis wisely obeyed, sliding into the passenger seat.

Jensen drove them back carefully, his hands at ten and two on the steering wheel, his speed just below the limit. He licked his bloody lips.

“Is it true?” he asked finally. “What Morgan said? Is it true, or was it just a misguided attempt to get his sympathy?”

“It’s true,” Alexis said quietly, sounding completely unsurprised by the question. “I guess I _told_ him to get some sympathy, not that it worked, but I wasn’t making it up.”

“Does Jared know?” Jensen asked. Jared hadn’t said anything, and Jensen couldn’t believe Jared wouldn’t have _mentioned_ something so important.

“No,” Alexis said. “He doesn’t know yet. I wanted to speak with you first.”

Jensen glanced at her in surprise. “You wanted to talk to me first?” he repeated, stupidly.

“You know that Jared… cares about you,” Alexis said, carefully. “Maybe not the way you might like, but he _does_ care for you.”

Jensen’s cheeks burned. It was the closest he and Alexis had ever come to mentioning Jensen’s feelings for Jared, although he’d known from the looks (and Alexis’s behavior both toward him and toward Jared around him) that Alexis had guessed what Jared could never be allowed to see.

“He has a dangerous job, Jensen, you know that,” Alexis continued when it became clear Jensen wasn’t going to say anything. “It’s dangerous and it requires a ridiculous amount of travel, often to places that aren’t exactly top vacation getaways.”

Jensen remained quiet, starting to see where this was heading.

“It’s not a job for a family man, Jensen, you can see that, can’t you? It’s not a job for a man with a wife and child.”

Jensen nodded, stiffly. Yes, he could see that.

“I came to ask you to let him go.”

Jensen just looked at her. “What can I do to make him stay _or_ go? You know my position in the Organization – I don't have control over anything.”

“Yes I do,” Alexis agreed. “And I know what Jared thinks about that, and I know he’d never want to leave you there on your own.”

Jensen thought about working for the Organization without Jared, and failed.

“You shouldn’t read too much into that, though,” Alexis continued without pause. “Jared’s a good man. He knows how difficult it is for you to adapt to the real world, and he’s tried to be your friend and make it as easy for you as possible. I know he’s done it on purpose, he’s said so many times. He’d do it for anyone. But you can’t expect him to keep looking after you at the expense of his own family, of his own _child_.”

“I wouldn’t,” Jensen defended himself.

“Well then,” Alexis said, sounding satisfied. “You need to make it easy for him. When he tells you the news about the baby, tell him you think he should leave and find a less dangerous job. Don’t make him agonize over the right thing to do. You _know_ what the right thing to do is, Jensen, so don’t make it too hard for him.”

Jensen thought about how much Jared would want a child – the way Jared had talked about having a family and how it had seemed so far off in the future to Jensen then – a million miles away from the two of them sitting on long jobs or overnight stays, or on a hundred plane journeys and a thousand car trips.

Jensen pulled up outside the house Jared and Alexis shared, where they would soon be joined by another life that would bind them even closer together than marriage could.

“I can count on you, then, Jensen?” Alexis said.

“I won’t get in the way,” Jensen replied, looking resolutely through the windshield.

“You’ll help persuade him to leave?”

“I won’t get in the way,” Jensen repeated. He couldn’t bring himself to agree to _try_ to get Jared to leave him. Just letting it happen would be hard enough.

“All right.” Alexis opened the door. “You do know though,” she continued before getting out, “even if I wasn’t pregnant, he’d still never be with you.”

Jensen inhaled a sharp breath but didn’t look at her.

“It would never even cross his mind, no matter how _pretty_ you are, as your old friend back there said.” Jensen closed his eyes as she got in her parting shot. “And if he found out what you really wanted… well. If he found out, it would make him uncomfortable, and then leaving the Organization would be just that much easier for him.”

Jensen heard the car door slam, and opened his eyes. He watched her go to the door, and she looked back at him and met his eyes for a moment before going into the house.

Jared had picked a strong woman, he thought, not even shaky after a near-death experience, still clearly focused on her goals. Jensen thought Morgan would have liked her if he’d really had the chance to become acquainted.

Jensen sat in the car for a few long moments after Alexis had gone in the house, and then finally pulled away, barely able to see the road.

***

When Jared got home the next day, he was surprised that Alexis was at the airport waiting for him instead of Jensen.

He grinned, though, as he approached his beautiful girl and swept her up into a kiss.

“Jared,” she said, and he noticed she was a little pale, and her voice a little strained.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s Jensen,” she said, softly, touching his face. “He’s dead.”

“ _What_?” Jared actually half-smiled, expecting a joke. Ridiculous. Jensen had been home on leave while he was gone. Jensen was _indestructible_.

“Jensen’s dead. There was a terrible situation and we were kidnapped, and Jensen _insisted_ on driving after, even though he’d gotten a head wound during the escape,” Alexis sounded breathless. “I knew he was upset, I should have stopped him, but I didn’t and he crashed his car on the way home after he left me. I couldn’t tell you over the phone, Jared, but... he’s dead. Jared, I’m so sorry.”

Jared’s knees gave way and folded around the sudden agonizing pain.

***

**Part 3**

***

_  
The telephone was picked up on the second ring._

_“Doctor Badass,” came the cheerful greeting._

_“Lindberg, it’s Jensen.”_

_“Jensen! My man!” Chad Lindberg said happily. “How’s your vacation treating you? Getting a nice tan?”_

_“No, I…”_

_“Getting some nice_ action _?” Chad interrupted him. “Man, if I looked like you I’d get_ so much play _…”_

_“Chad!” Jensen stopped him before he could start describing the possibilities in detail. “I need a favor.”_

_“Sure man,” Chad said. “Your cable stop working?”_

_Jensen snorted out a surprised laugh. He got along surprisingly well with Chad – better than anyone else at the Organization except Jared, even though it had been Chad who had reprogrammed Jensen’s chip to a controller he made for Kripke, but Jensen couldn’t blame him for doing his job. Chad was so incredibly mellow. But whenever Jensen spoke to Chad, he was always reminded of how different his life was from most other peoples’ lives._

_“No,” Jensen took a deep breath. “I want you to deactivate my chip.”_

_“For real?” Chad’s voice took on a note of squeaky surprise, but a hint of seriousness as well. “You said you wouldn’t leave anyway, so it didn’t matter!”_

_Chad had offered to deactivate Jensen’s chip more than a year ago. Chad was eminently unsuited to the moral grays of the Organization, but Kripke had him on his payroll because he was simply the best technologist available. Chad’s moral compass, mostly disguised by his flakiness, was a strong as anyone’s Jensen had ever met – although Jensen would confess he probably hadn’t met a representative sample of moral people in his life – and Chad, like Jared, was strongly opposed to Jensen being coerced into working anywhere he might not want to. So when they’d gotten to know each other better, he’d offered to deactivate the chip and help Jensen get away._

_“It’s time to move on,” Jensen said, swallowing around the tightness in his throat at the thought. “Does your offer still stand?”_

_“Of course!” Chad said instantly. “And you know I can help you get some paperwork so you can get a job and you won’t have to, like, go off and live in the wilds and kill animals with your bare hands like Grizzly Adams to survive. Although I totally bet you could do that, and that actually might be pretty awesome…”_

_“Paperwork would be great, Chad, thanks,” Jensen interrupted. “Can you do it now?”_

_“Now?” Chad said, startled. “You want them_ now _?”_

_Jensen thought back to the look of mingled triumph and pity Alexis had shot him as she’d gone into the house earlier that day, and how much easier this would be with Jared still out of town._

_“Yeah. Right now.”_

_***_

_It hadn’t been hard at all, as it turned out. The paperwork had to wait a few days, but it took mere moments to deactivate the chip. The car was a slight problem, because Alexis knew Jensen was driving Morgan’s car afterward instead of his own. But she probably wouldn’t remember what Morgan’s car was like if Jensen faked a crash in that – she’d had plenty of other things on her mind – and Morgan’s car crashed without a link to Jensen would do him no good at all. It hadn’t been a significant problem, though. Jensen had simply dropped Morgan’s car off at his house and picked up his own._

_What Jensen was doing out again that night was easy to explain away._

_The narrow bridge where he staged the whole thing was on the way up to a part of the nearby hillside that Jared knew Jensen liked to run on. Since his telephone call to Jared that very morning (Christ, had it only been that morning?) had established that Jensen was suffering from insomnia, no-one would be surprised that he’d headed out for a pre-dawn run. And if Alexis had shared their day’s adventures with Jared, then everyone would know that Jensen had a few injuries. So a mild concussion, or fainting from blood-loss, could easily explain him losing control and spinning off the road, right through the barriers and off the bridge._

_He’d made Chad promise not to tell anyone, especially Jared, about their plan. Chad had tried to persuade him that Jared should be told, but Jensen felt that a clean break would be better for everyone, and Jared would soon have a new child who would help him get over the death of a work colleague – even one who’d been his partner for a few years. It had always been a real possibility, even a probability, that such a thing might happen in their line of work. They’d all lost colleagues before, and the shock of it might make Jared even more likely to give up field work._

_Jensen had watched as his car sank slowly into the water, waiting until the last glint of metal slipped under the surface and there was no longer any reason to stay. He’d pulled a bag over his shoulder, turned, and started walking away. There was no room for regrets._

_***_

__  
**One year later**   


Jensen shifted in his seat. He wasn’t a nervous flier, but he hated going through airport security; he felt naked and exposed without a gun, and there was always the risk that someone might look too closely at his passport.

Steve hummed softly next to him, flipping casually through _Guitar World_. Steve’s thigh pressed warmly against his, as if he sensed some of the tension in Jensen, and Jensen pressed back briefly, trying to relax.

He’d passed off his tension as general fear of flying, and Steve wouldn’t push. Steve never pushed. Steve Carlson was the most relaxed guy he’d ever known, and Jensen thought maybe it was rubbing off on him. A little.

That thought actually made Jensen feel slightly more tense, in fact, enough so that Steve, feeling it through their physical connection, or maybe that sixth sense that made him able to deal with Jensen, looked up from his magazine.

“Would it help you relax if I blew you in the bathroom?” Steve asked, with a grin and a leer.

And Jensen grinned back. Smiling like that was becoming less and less foreign for him than it used to be.

He didn’t let Steve blow him in the bathroom, but he did attribute Steve powers of distraction to the fact that he didn’t notice the terrorists until it was much too late.

***

The flight was a continental one, going from St. Louis to Milwaukee, where Steve was playing a minor gig. Jensen often accompanied him to gigs. His work as a security guard – which was how he’d met Steve in the first place, working security at a gig Steve was playing – was contract work and flexible enough. He was happy to accompany Steve to smaller venues, although he avoided big cities like Washington and New York, just in case he ran into anyone who knew him. He avoided the whole state of Texas, too. He wasn’t dumb enough to imagine that he might just run into Jared in some random town in the great state of Texas – he knew Jared visited his parents often, but simply avoiding San Antonio ought to be enough to take care of actually meeting Jared. No. If Jensen was completely honest, the problem was really the accent. Jared’s Texan twang was strong enough that Jensen, who had more or less learned how to talk socially from Jared, had taken on elements of Jared’s own accent himself.

He didn’t need to hear that Texan accent anymore, and he didn’t want to. He heard it enough in his dreams.

The flight wasn’t especially full, maybe forty people in all. The men had gotten on the plane before Jensen and Steve, and they’d looked ordinary enough at the time.

Jensen thought he should probably have taken an inventory of the plane and passengers when he’d entered himself. He _should_ have, and in the past he _would_ have, but the truth was that it probably wouldn’t have made any difference in the circumstances he and the other passengers now found themselves in.

He didn’t know how the men had gotten the guns on the plane – maybe they’d had accomplices in the airport – but all that really mattered was that now there were five armed men on the plane. It was pure luck, Jensen thought, that they were still on the tarmac.

The stewardess, unusually efficient, had asked one of the men right away if he was feeling ill. The man seemed to be the youngest of them – practically a boy – and he’d been sweaty and nervous-looking to begin with. The question had apparently pushed him over the edge and he’d pulled his gun out early, before the plane had even taken off.

The stewardess’s scream had alerted everyone to the problem, including both Jensen and the pilots. Jensen had jumped up in his seat to find four other men jumping out of _their_ seats, but all of them had guns, and all Jensen had was… harsh language.

Steve’s hand clasping his arm tightly had brought Jensen back to his seat before he’d drawn the men’s attention, and now he watched them as they argued among themselves about what to do.

Jensen was pretty sure that the pilots had managed to radio the controllers and inform them of the situation before one of the men had gone up to the cock-pit to point a gun at them. Soon the terrorists would probably get organized enough to make the pilots take off, or they might decide that their objectives (whatever they were) could be met simply by having forty or so hostages.

In any case, they looked pretty trigger-happy and they were spread all over the plane.

***

A hostage situation was always a nightmare. Jared hated them – something was always bound to go wrong, and there was always the nagging thought that somehow you might have done things better. That a different choice, a different action, would have led to a better resolution.

By the time he got to the airport a team was already on site, starting to run scenarios, going over the CCTV footage from airport security and the papers from check-in, hoping to ID the terrorists.

Chad Lindberg was already there, running the tapes. Better him than Jared – scanning through all that footage was a hell of a chore. Jared’s job was almost certainly going to involve being shot at later - it usually did. He still wouldn’t trade.

Jared nodded to his partner, who smiled back. Misha was a great guy, and he'd performed well as Jared’s partner for the past nine months after Kripke had insisted Jared needed a new one. Misha was dedicated, efficient, easy-going and much less work to get to know and interact with than Jared’s previous partner had been.

There were days when Jared couldn’t even look at him.

He jerked his head now to indicate to Misha that they should go get briefed by Kripke, and as he passed by Chad Lindberg, Jared clapped him on the shoulder and glanced at the CCTV picture of the airport lounges prior to the plane being boarded.

He froze suddenly, as his brain processed what his eyes had seen, his mouth suddenly dry.

He turned back to the screen, watching intently. No. Nothing there.

“Go back,” he croaked. Chad turned to look at him in surprise. Jared cleared his throat. “Go back,” he repeated. “I think I saw something.”

Obediently, Chad rewound the clip.

“There!” Jared said. “Look there!”

Chad replayed the footage, and Misha came up behind Jared and asked quietly, “What are we looking at?”

Jared shrugged him off, watching the screen intently.

What he was looking at was... well, it was the back of a man wearing jeans and a leather jacket, was what it was. The quality of the picture wasn’t that great, and it was only the back of the man's head, _but_ …

The set of the shoulders. The angle of the neck, that walk...

“Look, go around – ” Jared stopped, frustrated by the two-dimensional limitations of the film. “Can you pick up a better view of that man?”

“This guy?” Chad asked, already pressing keys. “Sure.”

After a few tense moments Chad produced a picture of the guy from another CCTV camera, this time from the front. Jared felt like his heart had stopped.

“What is it?” Misha asked. “Is he in the database? Someone on the watch list?”

Jared couldn’t answer, staring mutely at the screen.

“It’s Jensen Ackles,” Chad said quietly.

***

Jensen’s mind raced as he sat on the plane. They hadn’t taken off, so it didn’t look like a 9/11 situation, thank God. The terrorists were probably just looking to make a point, or to have some of their captive colleagues held in jail somewhere freed. They didn’t even have to be held in the U.S. - the terrorists might just be trying to access the political and military might of the U.S. to facilitate the release.

 _The United States does not negotiate with terrorists._ The mantra surfaced in his mind with years of familiarity. But these men were probably banking on the idea that the U.S. _might,_ if there was strong enough incentive.

This was going to end badly.

Even if they somehow made it off the plane without innocent bloodshed, it would end badly for Jensen. The odds were very high that the Organization would be involved in handling this and if they _were_ , the chances of Jensen getting out of this without being seen were incredibly small. Even if he did, it wouldn’t help much. Jensen’s papers were not going to stand up to detailed scrutiny from any of the major branches of U.S. government operations.

The absolute best Jensen could hope for was a little time before they examined 'Joe Marshall' too deeply. Just a day or two would give Jensen enough time to relocate before they came looking, which would happen as soon as it became apparent that Joe Marshall hadn’t existed until about a year ago.

Either way, there was no way Joe Marshall was going to be able to continue being with Steve Carlson, not after Jensen got off this plane.

He turned to Steve, who was watching the armed men over Jensen’s shoulder with wide eyes, and touched his arm.

“Steve,” he began, “look, if we get out of here I need you to do something for me.”

“What?”

“If we get out of here, I need you to just walk away. It’s better for you not to be seen leaving with me.”

Steve stared at him. “Wait, _what?_ I don’t understand.”

Jensen sighed. “I might very well be taken into custody after this, and even if I’m not, they’ll come for me eventually. The quicker I can get away from here, and the less you seem to be involved with me or anything about me, the better.” It was probably wildly optimistic to think they wouldn’t trace Joe Marshall to Steve Carlson, but both their jobs required so much travel that they hadn’t been living together officially. It was worth a shot. “I’m going to have to disappear.”

Steve looked at him for a long moment. “Is this because of all those things you’d never talk to me about?”

Jensen smiled back wryly. They’d been good together, and he couldn’t imagine ever finding a nicer guy than Steve. But Jensen had shared nothing about his past, and one of the reasons they'd gotten along so well was that Steve never pressured him for more than he could give.

“Yeah.”

Steve sighed, and looked down.

“Are you sure it has to be this way?” That was about as close to demanding as Steve ever got.

“I’m sorry,” Jensen said softly and Steve looked away, blinking hard.

“I…” Jensen stopped, not sure how to go on. He wanted to tell Steve he loved him, but he’d never been able to say it, despite the open warmth of Steve’s love. He hadn't said it because he couldn’t lie to Steve, and that was still true now. Steve had asked him before if there was someone else, because he’d sensed somehow that he couldn’t be ‘the one’ for Jensen. There wasn’t anyone else in the real sense, of course, but Jensen's feelings for Jared were just as much of a barrier to moving on. So he agreed to that phrasing, because Steve deserved absolute honesty.

“I don’t remember ever being as content as I was with you,” he said, instead of ‘I love you’, and though it sounded weak it still meant a lot to Jensen, and he wanted Steve to know it. “You made me as happy as I could possibly be. Thank you.”

It wasn’t fair to say he’d actually been happy, because he’d missed Jared like a love-struck fool every waking moment, but he hadn't been _unhappy_ and the credit for that lay squarely with Steve.

Steve looked at him with wet eyes. “I love you.”

Jensen leaned forward and kissed him softly. “I’ll miss you,” he said.

***

“How did this happen?”

Eric Kripke was furious, and an entire roomful of large men who risked their lives as a chosen profession all drew back slightly, because Kripke’s cold fury was unsettling even for those with hardened nerves. “How did this happen? We activated his chip when he went MIA to specifically _be sure_ this hadn’t happened. _So how did this happen?_ ”

Jared didn’t respond, too busy staring at the CCTV footage of _Jensen_ on the screen. _Jensen_. It was beyond belief that Jensen could be alive, but it was unmistakably him. He was also, unmistakably, with the man sitting next to him there on the image still displayed on the screen - _with_ him in all possible senses of the word. There was nothing explicit on the tape, but the closeness - the way Jensen let the man near, let him _touch_ him, leaned into him when they talked, even smiled with his eyes - was as a clear a signal to Jared as if they were wearing a sign.

Jared gnawed his lip, and pressed the rewind button on the CCTV footage for the twentieth time. He’d pushed Chad out of the way and was doing it himself because Chad was too damn slow, and Jared couldn’t begin to sort out the knot of tension in his gut enough to explain why he kept running over and over the few seconds of Jensen touching the guy’s arm and smiling his small, but totally genuine smile.

That smile had haunted Jared’s dreams for the past year, but Jared’s instinctive joy at seeing it, was severely hampered by his feelings at seeing it _aimed at someone else_

They’d tracked Jensen through the CCTV footage, right through his check-in. They knew the name he was registered under, Joe Marshall, and what flight and seat he was on. It turned out that he was on the plane with the hijackers, of course. _Of course._

“At least we know who we’re dealing with now,” Kripke was saying, and Jared snapped his attention back to his surroundings.

“What?”

“We know Ackles’ _modus operandus_ , so it'll be easier to resolve the situation.”

Jared stared at him. “You can’t possibly think _Jensen's_ involved in the hijacking?”

“He’s on the plane,” Kripke pointed out, reasonably. “That’s one hell of a coincidence.”

“Yes, it is,” Jared agreed, “but it's far more likely than Jensen sneaking out of our Organization to become a terrorist, especially one who plans his attack so incompetently that there's almost no chance of him making it out alive.”

Kripke’s eyes narrowed, clearly mulling that over – Kripke was not the type to let anger get in the way of sense.

“Any other potential suspects on the passenger list?” Kripke asked a nearby agent, who produced a page of paper.

It didn’t take long at all to ascertain that there were at least four people on the plane who met the likely profile of a terrorist.

Kripke nodded. “It could actually benefit us, having Ackles on the plane,” he mused.

“Lindberg,” he continued, turning to the tech, “since you more or less know where Ackles is, is it possible to reprogram his chip so it can be activated remotely?”

“There’s no need,” Jared said. “Jensen’s never been a risk, you know that. He’ll help us without it.”

“While your faith in your ex-partner is touching, Jared,” Kripke said, coldly, “but he left the Organization. He _betrayed_ us. And I’m not going in there with an unknown quantity.”

Jared looked away – he wanted to deny Jensen had _betrayed_ them, because Kripke had never given him any trust for Jensen _to_ betray, but the words stuck in his throat, because _Kripke_ might never have trusted Jensen, but Jared sure the hell had.

“Lindberg?” Kripke prompted Chad, eyes narrowing.

Chad swallowed, his eyes darting around uneasily. “I’m… not sure.”

“Lindberg,” Kripke said softly, dangerously, “Ackles could be a serious asset aboard that plane right now if we could be sure of his cooperation. Now is not the time for the discussion we _will_ be having later about how the chip got deactivated in the first place, but that conversation will probably go a lot easier for you if you _get that chip working again_.”

Chad squinted for a moment, apparently thinking. “I can do it,” he said. “It will only take a few minutes. Unless he had surgery to remove the chip, it'll work again. And considering where it's located, I can't believe he'd have risked taking it out.”

“Excellent.” Kripke considered for a moment. “This is what we’ll do.”

***

Being a hostage was actually quite boring, if you took away the mind-numbing terror most people experienced. Since Jensen was not ‘most people’, not by a long shot, he was left with just the boredom.

He was already sitting on the aisle side of the row, offering Steve a little protection that way. If it came down to it, Jensen was sure he could take out one of the terrorists, possibly even two or three of them, depending on his luck and how close they were standing together before one of them finally managed to shoot him.

He could hear the hijackers talking on the radio. They’d clearly decided not to try to take off, figuring the hostages would be enough. A foolish move, Jensen thought, because they were far less vulnerable to attack in the air, even if a plane (with its few entrances) was relatively easy to defend on the ground. But leaving the plane on the ground meant that the hostages could all be kept together, since there was no reason for the pilots to stay in the cockpit, so the terrorists probably felt more in control right where they were.

Jensen tensed as two of the hijackers approached his seat. It wasn't completely out of the question that he might have been recognized as an agent, but he'd dismissed that idea already as being too much of a coincidence. Perhaps he had been wrong.

The men approached, both with their guns out, and one of them spoke in clear and heavily accented English. “You are Joe Marshall?”

Jensen nodded slowly.

“Come with us,” the man said, gesturing with his gun towards the cockpit.

Jensen stood up carefully. The men were too far apart to be sure of taking out both of them, so Jensen gave Steve's hand a final squeeze and moved obediently toward the cockpit.

“We are allowing the Doctor to visit you,” the man continued. “As a gesture of good faith.”

Jensen didn’t reveal any surprise at those words. Whoever was handling the situation had obviously identified him. Joe Marshall had no medical history that would cause concern for any authorities surrounding the plane.

He went past the curtain into the cockpit, where a man in a white labcoat with a small first aid kit was waiting with one of the other hijackers.

It was Jared.

Jensen froze. It had been a long time, and the impact of seeing Jared again was like a fist clenching inside his chest.

He looked good. Jensen met his eyes, which were unreadable, and Jared's face was pleasantly blank.

“Mr. Marshall? I’m Doctor Kripke. These gentlemen have allowed me to bring you some medication, because this delay means you'll be late getting home for your operation.”

Jensen nodded, not trusting his voice, a small smile starting to grow on his face in spite of the situation. Jared. _Jared_ was here. Jensen had prepared himself so thoroughly to never see Jared again, and now he was _here_. He couldn't keep the happiness from bubbling up inside him.

Jared was more professional, his face staying in character, which was partly why it was such a shock when Jensen suddenly felt a searing bolt of pain in his skull that surprised him so much that he actually screamed.

The chip had been reactivated, and it obviously still worked. It was turned on only for a second, clearly some kind of warning. Jensen returned to his senses just moments after the pain had struck to find himself on his knees, his hand uselessly clutching the back of his head.

He gasped through the aftershocks, and looked up to see that Jared was right next to him now. Jared's face was still carefully blank as he reached out and pulled Jensen up by the arm.

“I’ve brought an injection of painkillers and anti-seizure medication, which should prevent those episodes from happening again,” Jared said, “and you can take a few doses back to your seat to prevent any more.”

Jensen nodded, not meeting Jared’s eyes, the pain in his head still making it hard to think. He started to feel cold inside, as he realized what was happening: he was trapped again. _Trapped._ And he couldn't shake the fact that Jared didn’t seem pleased to see him.

“Mr. Marshall,” Jared said, and Jensen brought his attention back around. Jared was preparing an injection. “How many attacks have you had in the plane? That’s _in the plane_ ,” Jared stressed, “not including the ones here in the cockpit?”

“Two,” Jensen said, dully. Three of the hijackers were here in the cockpit and two remained in the plane.

“Good,” Jared said. “Here’s an injection now, and I’m giving you three more to take later. I suggest you take the next one at 3 o’clock, since it’s been so long since you had your last dose. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” Jared said again. “Now, give me your arm and I'll administer the first injection.”

Jensen looked at the syringe. Anything could be in it. But he had to hope Jared wouldn't hurt him, not deliberately. Slowly, he rolled up his sleeve and extended his arm.

Jared looked down as he inserted the needle in Jensen's arm, then met Jensen’s eyes as he pushed down on the plunger. Jensen couldn't begin to tell what Jared was thinking, and he knew some of that worry was probably on his face. “There, all done,” Jared finally said.

Jensen nodded as Jared removed the needle and put it away, and then handed Jensen the first aid kit.

One of the hijackers snatched it out of his hand and Jared and Jensen both watched as the men investigated it suspiciously. Finding nothing out of the ordinary in the simple plastic box with three syringes, they handed it back to Jensen and ushered him out.

Jensen didn’t look back.

***

He slid into his seat next to Steve, who’d been waiting anxiously for his return.

“Are you OK?” Steve asked, grasping his hand.

“Yeah,” Jensen replied, closing his eyes as he leaned back into the headrest. He wasn't great, but he was all right.

“What’s that?” Steve asked, tapping the box.

Jensen looked back down at the box with ‘First Aid’ written on it.

“A lifeline,” he replied. He glanced at his watch. It read 2:42.

Eighteen minutes to go.

He turned to Steve. “So you’ll go? If we make it out of here, whatever happens, you’ll just leave quietly like you never met me?”

“If you want,” Steve said, looking as unhappy as the first time Jensen had suggested the idea.

“Good.” Jensen bit his lip briefly. “I just want to say… whatever you see me do, or whatever happens to me, I want you to know… I’m not a criminal. I’m not…” _A bad person_ sounded extremely lame, but it was important Steve knew that, so Jensen went with it anyway, “… a bad person.”

“Of course not,” Steve said. “I know.”

“I’m just…” Jensen smiled, a little bitterly. “I've experienced an unfortunate series of events, I guess.”

He opened the box.

“I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get ready now.” He pulled out the syringes and looked at them closely. One had a small green dot on the side near the needle, and he put that one back – it was the harmless one, in case he was forced to take a shot in front of the hijackers. He kept the other two.

Carefully he undid the top of one of the syringes, where a custom-built lid had been put on it specifically for the purpose, and used the other syringe to draw the liquid into it – effectively mixing the contents of the two syringes into one.

He checked his watch. A few minutes to go. He visualized Jared and the rest of the team preparing outside, and drew in a deep breath, relaxing his muscles. He could do this – this was what he’d been trained for, what he’d done all his life.

“When I tell you to, get down in the seat as low as you can,” he said to Steve, who nodded in response. It wasn’t much, but the best he could do.

He looked around casually, checking on the hijackers. There were three in the body of the plane now, and two up in the cockpit, presumably still on the radio making their demands. They were probably talking to Kripke, which made Jensen smile slightly – good luck getting _him_ to give in to anything. When he’d been up there, Jensen had noticed they’d been smart enough to cover the cockpit windows with jackets, so that any snipers wouldn’t be able to see to take them out. They’d also pulled all the shutters down over the windows in the passenger cabin, so there’d be no sniper bullets in here either, if the rescue crew even decided to risk it with the hostages so near.

Of the three in the plane, two were conveniently near Jensen now. He looked at his watch again – five seconds to three - and then with one last squeeze of Steve’s hand and a whispered ‘get down,’ Jensen gripped the syringe with his right hand and clutched at his head with his left, deliberately falling out of his seat and into the aisle with a loud cry of fake pain.

The hijackers reacted instantly, the two closest ones winging their guns toward him and approaching with suspicion.

Jensen waited until they were close enough before twisting suddenly and hurling the syringe sharply at their feet. It broke, and as soon as the mixed liquid was exposed to the air, it erupted instantly into a cloud of dense smoke.

The hijackers lost valuable seconds reacting to the comparatively harmless missile thrown at them (with so many hostages, the contents weren’t toxic), but moments were all Jensen really needed. He followed the syringe’s path and powered into the nearest hijacker, grabbing the man’s gun. At the same time, he pulled the hijacker in front of him and used him as armor while shooting the second man in the heart in one, smooth movement. He heard an explosion and gunfire up at the front of the plane, but ignored it because there was nothing he could do about it. Moving himself and the first hijacker around to face the third, he was just in time for the man shielding him to take the third attacker’s shot directly to the chest.

The look of horror on the man’s face when he realized what he’d done gave Jensen enough time to finish him cleanly with a shot to the head.

The whole process had taken no more than thirty seconds.

As he swung himself and the corpse of the first hijacker around to face the plane’s entrance, armed Organization men dressed in black with protective eye goggles came forward, advancing on him and the passengers.

“DROP YOUR WEAPON,” the lead agent yelled, his rifle pointed directly at Jensen.

Jensen dropped both his gun and the first attacker’s body, and put his hands palm-up in a conciliatory gesture.

“GET DOWN ON THE FLOOR!”

“That’s not—” Even though he’d warned Steve, Jensen didn’t want to be treated like a criminal in front of him.

“GET DOWN! NOW! ON YOUR FRONT!”

Four agents had their guns on him, and Jensen obeyed, dropping to the floor.

Jensen lay on the floor, letting the agents swarm over him and yank his hands behind his back to cuff him before pulling him up.

He ignored the agents calling out the _all clear_ for the plane and moving to check over the hostages, instead concentrating on finding Jared.

There. He was there in the front of the plane, so he’d clearly been involved in dealing with the two hijackers at the front. Jensen scanned Jared for obvious injuries, and then took in the rest of the scene. It seemed to have gone very well, with both hijackers down and just one agent being treated for what looked like a shoulder wound.

Jared met his eyes briefly, before turning around and leaving the plane. Jensen looked down, his stomach uneasy, but then the agent holding his arm was pulling him toward the plane’s exit. He glanced back for one final moment, only to find Steve watching him go.

He managed a small smile for Steve to remember him by, before being pulled out of the plane, squinting, into the sunlight.

Kripke was waiting for him outside, and Jensen’s spine stiffened automatically. He flexed his wrists uncomfortably in the cuffs, instinctively not wanting to be bound and helpless in front of a man he knew would _always_ take advantage of any weakness.

“Well, well, Jensen Ackles. This is quite the lucky surprise.” The mocking tone reminded Jensen forcibly of Morgan. He’d always thought Morgan and Kripke were horribly alike, but never said so, not wanting to compliment either of them. Both men were ruthlessly efficient and totally devoid of mercy in pursuit of their goals. While Morgan had always made sure to find more pleasure in his life than Kripke, Jensen had often thought that only reflected which side of the fence the two of them had happened to end up on. Sometimes the difference between the criminals and those who caught them was an almost indistinguishably fine line.

“Oh yes,” Jensen agreed, resolutely keeping his eyes on Kripke and not on Jared, who had appeared at Kripke’s shoulder. “I do feel lucky.”

“Padalecki tells me the chip still works just fine,” Kripke continued conversationally. Jensen’s eyes went immediately to Kripke’s hands: Kripke had a flair for the dramatic, and Jensen wouldn’t put it past him for a second to punctuate that sentence by confirming the chip’s capabilities. But his hands were thankfully empty, and of course he’d have the sense not to run a demonstration like that in public. “So it looks like you’ll be coming back with us.”

Jensen didn’t respond; there was nothing to say.

“I’ll see you back at headquarters, Ackles,” Kripke continued, “and we’ll have a nice, long debriefing.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Jensen replied, manufacturing a false smile which Kripke returned just as woodenly before moving off into a waiting car.

There was nothing to do but look at Jared then, so Jensen cautiously raised his eyes. Jared’s look was unreadable, and Jensen just barely managed to keep himself from shifting back and forth from foot-to-foot under that unrelenting scrutiny.

Finally Jared spoke, but not to Jensen.

“Who has the keys to the cuffs?” he asked the agents standing nearby.

“I do,” one of them said.

“Take them off,” Jared told him.

The agent hesitated. “Uh, Mr. Kripke told us all to treat this man as extremely dangerous, and to make sure he was restrained until we had him back at headquarters.”

Jared rolled his eyes. “Mr. Kripke likes to make a big show sometimes. Take them off.”

The man unfastened Jensen’s cuffs, then quickly stepped away from him. Jensen’s reputation was clearly still in full force at the Organization.

Jensen didn’t bother reacting to the display, but instead brought his hands forward slowly and rubbed his wrists, keeping his eyes on Jared.

Jared stepped toward him, and Jensen held himself still, his heart beating a little faster because suddenly it seemed possible that Jared might finally hug him.

 _BAM_. Jared’s fist collided with Jensen’s face, and Jensen staggered back.

Jared stood there with his fists clenched and his chest heaving, and for the first time Jensen got a glimpse of just how angry Jared was. The blank mask he’d been wearing on the plane was a disguise, but now it had slipped and Jared was clearly absolutely furious.

The rest of the agents stepped back carefully. Apparently _both_ of their reputations had preceded them, and clearly no one wanted to get caught in the middle of this.

“I thought you were dead,” Jared said, his voice was tight with barely-leashed anger. “I though you were _dead_ , you _motherfucker_.”

Jensen’s hands had tightened instinctively into fists under the attack, but he forced them to relax.

His face was throbbing, and he’d had more than enough experience over the years with that kind of injury to know that there’d be one hell of a bruise later. His throat was tight as he stared into Jared’s dark eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said, helpless in the face of Jared’s anger.

Jared’s fists clenched even tighter and he gritted his teeth. Jensen had no idea what he’d do if Jared hit him like that again. Every instinct would urge him to fight back, but he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to punch Jared when that look was in his eyes.

But Jared turned to the nearby agents instead. “Take him back to Headquarters,” he directed, and then he walked away without looking at Jensen again.

Jensen watched him go.

***

**Part 4**

***

Jensen hadn’t been out of Headquarters for two weeks. Neither, he supposed, had Chad, who’d gotten into serious trouble for helping him out. Jensen felt bad about that, but while Chad looked pale he also seemed completely unrepentant. All he would say was that he was sorry it hadn’t worked out.

Jensen was sorry too.

He hadn’t seen Jared since he’d returned, and he certainly hadn’t been sent out on an assignment. He wondered what Kripke would do with him if Jared refused to accept him as a partner again. Would he try to pair Jensen up with someone else? It seemed unlikely that Kripke would trust Jensen out on his own now.

Thinking about that, as troubling as it was, was much easier than wondering _Where was Jared_?

Jensen had heard from Chad that Jared had split from Alexis. He wanted to talk to Jared, but there’d been no sign of him. Kripke had given Jared two weeks off, in what some might have said was an unexpectedly charitable gesture (after the shock Jared had been through), but which Jensen was pretty sure was just because he knew it would drive Jensen crazy.

He slammed the punching bag hard. All he’d been allowed to do since coming back was work out in the gym and practice shooting and martial arts, and while he hadn’t exactly let himself go over the last year, it was possible he could have used a little sharpening up. Well, he was sure getting it. His scores in the shooting range were faultless again now, instead of being a fraction of a percentage off the way they’d been when he’d first returned.

Unfortunately, he’d had nothing but the punching bag to practice his hand-to-hand combat skills on, because Jared, again, was nowhere to be found, and no one else was that stupid.

He attacked the bag again, viciously.

“I’m pretty sure it’s not the bag’s fault.”

Jensen stilled, catching the bag in his taped hands.

“The bag was the only thing here,” Jensen replied, turning around to where Jared was leaning against the doorway. He looked good, but then he always looked good to Jensen.

Jared shrugged and inclined his head, acknowledging the truth of that statement.

Questions clamored on Jensen’s tongue: _How’ve you been?_ Where _have you been? Why are you still working here? Did you miss me? Are you glad I’m back? Are you still mad at me?_

That last question sounded particularly plaintive and pathetic in his head, and Jensen didn’t ask any of them – especially that last one. Instead, he just watched Jared watching him.

“If you wanted to get revenge on something for the punch I gave you, I’m here now,” Jared said. “The bag doesn’t have to take it any more.”

Jensen just shook his head at that, not really wanting to discuss the subject at all, because the look in Jared’s eyes had haunted him for a while, and he was glad it wasn’t there anymore.

“I guess you did need the practice,” Jared continued, looking at the bag. “You’re looking saggy.”

Jensen snorted. “I could still take you and a whole bunch of your friends,” he responded to that blatant lie.

“Well, save your strength, tiger, we’ve got an assignment tomorrow.”

Jensen’s heart leaped. “Anything good?” he asked casually.

Jared shook his head with a wry smile. “Just reconnaissance. Guess Kripke thinks you’re looking flabby, too.”

 _More like looking crazy_ Jensen thought, but he would happily take flabby in its place.

“Well,” Jared continued, “Mom says you can finally go out, so long as I look after you and get you back by curfew. You want to grab some food?”

“Yes!” Jensen said, not bothering to hide his eagerness.

“Go shower, then, and I’ll meet you back here,” Jared said, stepping farther inside the gym room and sitting down on a pile of mats. “You look like the punching bag won.”

***

They’d been to this diner a dozen times before. The waitress was still the same and she smiled brightly at Jensen, clearly recognizing him from before. Jensen even smiled back a little as he ordered breakfast, feeling almost euphoric thanks to the enormous relief of being back with Jared.

“I’m sorry,” Jared said suddenly, while they were waiting for their food.

Jensen looked up from the table.

“I’m sorry I punched you,” Jared continued, looking uncomfortable but completely sincere. “I can see why working for Kripke like this is hard for you; you know I’ve never agreed with the way he forced you into it and I can see why you wanted out. No one should be coerced like that to do _anything,_ let alone the stupidly dangerous things we have to do.”

Jensen shrugged uneasily.

“It’s not so bad,” he said. “What the hell else would I do?”

“You could have a real life,” Jared said, forcefully. “You were doing a pretty good job of it before. I never blamed you for trying to get out – I know I’d want to. I just... I guess I was angry that you didn’t trust me when you left. I wouldn’t have told anyone. Instead, you let me think you were _dead_. You have no idea what that was like.”

“I’m sorry,” Jensen said again. “I didn’t think you’d…” he paused, because it wasn’t that he’d thought Jared wouldn’t _care_ , exactly, but that he’d figured Jared would get over it, the way he’d gotten over the loss of other colleagues. And maybe, just maybe, he’d wanted Jared to miss him like he knew he’d be missing Jared. “I thought it was for the best,” he finished, lamely.

“Were you happy?” Jared asked after a moment.

“I was… content,” Jensen replied, and the word seemed just as inadequate as it had when he’d used it with Steve, but it was still just as true.

“I went to see your friend,” Jared blurted out, and Jensen met his eyes in surprise.

“You went to see Steve?”

“Yeah,” Jared continued, and now _he_ was looking embarrassed. “I figured he deserved a better explanation than whatever Kripke was selling him.”

“Oh. Of course. Is he… okay?” Jensen asked.

“He will be. He told me to tell you he misses you,” Jared said. “And he hopes you’re okay.”

Jensen nodded. He missed Steve too, although he had to admit his thoughts had been much more focused on Jared.

“It doesn’t have to stay like this, you know,” Jared said, sounding earnest. “Kripke will let out the leash eventually, and you’ll get to have your own place again. You could start seeing Steve again, if you wanted.”

“No, it—” Jensen floundered a little. “He deserves better and I wasn’t… He wasn’t...” Jensen gave up. “It’s for the best.”

“You weren’t in love with him?”

Jensen flushed slightly. “Is this really the place?” he asked, and the waitress arrived with their orders as if she was helping to bail him out.

“You don’t have to answer,” Jared said, when she’d left. “It’s just… Well, he said that you weren’t.”

Jensen’s mouth twisted. Steve had always been scrupulously honest, and while Jensen had never spoken to Steve about Jared, Steve was a smart guy. The mere fact that Jared had come to see him would have spoken volumes.

“Not because of anything about him,” Jensen said, thinking about Steve over the last year. “He’s a great guy.”

“Seemed like it,” Jared said.

They ate for a little while in silence.

“He said there was someone else,” Jared said quietly. “He said he thought _you_ had someone else.”

Jensen carefully finished chewing his mouthful of eggs, not even choking a little. “I said that to make it easier on him.”

Jared nodded. “Right.”

They ate for a little bit more.

“You know that Alexis and I…”

“Yeah. I’m really sorry. Do you see the baby often?”

Jensen looked up from his food when a few moments had gone by and Jared had failed to answer. He found Jared staring at him.

“What?” Jensen asked.

“ _What_?” Jared asked back. “What did you say about a baby?”

Jensen stared back, his mind racing. “I, uh, I thought Chad said something about Alexis having a baby?” he tried.

“You _thought_ Chad said something about Alexis having a _baby_?” Jared repeated.

“Yeah, uh, maybe I misunderstood?” Jensen said, hopefully.

“There’s no baby,” Jared said, still staring at Jensen. His face had taken on a thoughtful aspect, an expression that had never really boded well for Jensen.

“Alexis actually thought she was pregnant,” Jared continued slowly, “but it turned out to be a false alarm.”

“Strange coincidence,” Jensen said quickly, nodding philosophically.

“She thought she was pregnant right about the same time you… disappeared,” Jared continued as though Jensen hadn’t spoken. “And _you_ thought she’d had a baby while you were gone. That _is_ a strange coincidence.”

Jensen shrugged, all _what are the odds?_ , and quickly returned to his bacon.

“Is that why?” Jared continued. “It had never really bothered you, the control the Organization had over you, but I still figured that was why you left. That was the only thing that made sense. But maybe that wasn’t the reason after all. Maybe it was the pregnancy. Was that why you left? Did Alexis tell you?”

Jensen scoffed. “Even if she had, why would that make me leave?” he asked, as if the idea were completely ridiculous.

Jared frowned, weighing the logic.

“I think,” Jared said slowly, “I think you left because I was marrying Alexis and she was having a baby. Chad told me he’d offered to deactivate the control chip months before you actually took him up on it. I think you found out about the baby, and that’s what made you decide to go.”

“Why would I leave because of that?” Jensen asked directly, looking Jared in the eye.

Jared knew him pretty well and Jensen could almost see Jared working through the puzzle, picking up the clues Jensen hadn’t been able to keep from dropping in the three years they’d worked together, and putting everything into place. He wasn’t going to make it easy for Jared to discover Jensen’s secret – to jeopardize their relationship, particularly now it was on such shaky ground – and he maintained eye contact to increase Jared’s discomfort in the hope of keeping him off the subject.

It was kind of hard to accuse someone of being in love with you without sounding like an arrogant asshole.

“Because of me,” Jared finally said, never one to back down from a challenge. “Because you wanted…” Jared paused. “Well, _me._ ”

“For your eloquence and charm, obviously,” Jensen said, looking away.

“And my body, too, of course,” Jared agreed.

Jensen swallowed hard and pushed the remainder of his food away, no longer able to even pretend to be hungry.

“Look,” he said, “get over yourself. Alexis did tell me, and I figured it would just make it easier for you to step out of active field duty if I wasn’t there. Otherwise, some misguided sense of loyalty would’ve made you feel that you needed to stay on the frontlines, just because I couldn’t get out.” Jensen suddenly appreciated that Alexis had handed him such a thorough excuse.

Jared mulled that over as Jensen forced himself to stay calm, keeping eye contact for as long as possible to lend sincerity to his claims. He’d always sucked at lying to Jared, and both of them knew it. He’d let Jared too far in, almost without noticing, and it was impossible now to keep him out.

Jared grinned suddenly, all white teeth and blinding smile, and Jensen realized he’d shifted in his seat unconsciously, telegraphing how hard he’d been working to sell that last story. Jared had clearly realized he’d been right the first time.

Jensen looked down. Busted.

“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” he said, unable to meet Jared’s eyes. “It doesn’t change anything. I’m sorry you found out, and I know it’ll make things… awkward, but nothing has to change, it’ll be no different from before. I mean… I wanted you for years before I left.”

“It’ll change things if I have anything to say about it,” Jared said.

Jensen looked up again.

“What you should have said,” Jared continued, his grin only getting wider, “Was, We’ve wasted _a lot_ of time.”

Jensen shook his head in disbelief. “No. No! You’re straight. You were _engaged_.”

“Yes, I am,” Jared agreed, “and I was. But this is different, because it’s _you_.”

Jared reached over the table and rested his hand on Jensen’s. Jensen stared at it, blinking uncomprehendingly.

“I… No.” Jensen tried to pull his hand away, but Jared tightened his grip so Jensen couldn’t remove his hand without causing a scene. “No, this is a bad idea.”

“Why?”

“It wouldn’t be real - you’d just be experimenting. You only split up with Alexis a few months ago. You’re on the rebound and a fling would just upset our partnership, and I really need this partnership to work because if it doesn’t then I might not get to work at all anymore.”

“It wouldn’t be like that,” Jared said, and his voice was full of promise and sincerity. Those same tones had charmed armed men into giving up their weapons, and suspicious targets into believing he was really just the mailman, despite carrying a large package at the time that had actually concealed a rocket launcher. “I’ve missed you. I’ve wanted you - so much.”

Jensen closed his eyes.

“You could hurt me,” he said finally, quietly, surrendering the truth at last. “More than you know.”

Jared paused for a moment. “You could kill me in a hundred different ways,” he replied, and though his voice was light, he squeezed Jensen’s hand tighter. “But I trust you not to. Please trust me, too.”

Jensen had no resistance left against that voice, or those words. So he nodded dumbly, and kept looking down at Jared’s hand on his. He did trust Jared, despite a lifetime of exposure to the worst elements of humanity.

“Let’s get out of here,” Jared said, throwing some money down on the table. “Come back to my place?”

***

Jensen’s heart was pounding as they reached Jared’s house, and he felt as nervous as he’d been on his first assignment for Morgan nearly twenty years ago.

Jared’s house was nicer than his apartment. Nicer than his _old_ apartment, he should say, because of course, the Organization would have let it go. He wondered what had happened to all his belongings, not that there was anything he’d really miss.

Jared led him into the house and into the living room. He turned to face Jensen, and it took an effort of will for Jensen to hold his ground and not step back.

“We don’t have to do anything, you know,” Jared said.

“I’m not fragile,” Jensen said, affronted, and he certainly wasn’t nervous about the _sex_ , for God’s sake, and to prove it he stepped closer to Jared. “We can do whatever you want,” he said, confidently. “I can take anything you want,” he continued, reaching for Jared’s belt.

That apparently was the wrong thing to say, because Jared took a step back.

“Morgan,” Jared said, not really a question.

Jensen paused before nodding.

He hadn’t exactly talked about any of that with Jared, but he knew it was on his file with the Organization, and he imagined Kripke would have let Jared see his file before making them partners. Still, he suspected this line of conversation might be something of a mood-killer, even if Jared already knew.

“It’s not important,” Jensen said, because it really wasn’t. The sex had been only one of the many ways in which Morgan had controlled him, and he knew now that it _was_ about control, about exerting power, and that part of the thrill for Morgan had been making him act against his own will. It had never been about sex, and the last year with Steve had banished any lingering shadows.

Jensen was not going to let Morgan to take anything else away from him, not any more.

“This is nothing like that,” Jensen said. “Not the same ballpark. Not even the same game.”

Jared smiled, a blinding, white smile, so different from Morgan’s darkly handsome smirk. Then he stepped forward, tilting Jensen’s face up slightly for a kiss.

Morgan had never bothered with kissing, of course, and while Steve had been both an excellent kisser as well as an excellent lover… he hadn’t been Jared.

Jared kissed deeply and thoroughly, as though it was the only thing that mattered, not like kissing was just a prelude to sex but actually important all its own. Jensen shivered and kissed him back, holding Jared’s waist and tipping his head slightly to give him better access.

He didn’t really know how long they’d been kissing before Jared drew back, his face flushed and his lips red and wet. Jensen reached back up to catch his lips across Jared’s one more time before finally leaning back.

“I’ve wanted to do that… for a long, long time,” Jared said, grinning happily.

“What, since breakfast?” Jensen couldn’t help but snark.

“No,” Jared said, and his voice was edging over to earnest again. “No, since a long time before that.”

Jensen looked down, because maybe… maybe he could believe Jared.

“Come upstairs?” Jared asked, and Jensen nodded. The idea of sex was giving him confidence. Sex was familiar territory, something he could do well, while the idea of an actual relationship with Jared was still pretty damn terrifying.

He followed Jared up into his bedroom, and stopped in surprise at the doorway when he looked inside. The ‘picture of blue’ that Jared had bought for his old apartment was hanging up on Jared’s bedroom wall.

It had been almost the only material thing Jensen had been sad to leave behind.

He turned to smile at Jared. “I’m glad you saved it,” he said.

“I’m glad too,” Jared said. “In retrospect, though, the bedroom might not have been the best place for it. It seemed to kill the mood with Alexis, somehow.”

Jensen tried to feel sorry about that, and failed spectacularly.

“Never mind,” he said. “I think it’s actually helping the mood now.” He approached Jared steadily and slid his hands up under his t-shirt.

Jared’s stomach was soft skin over hard muscle and Jensen felt his arousal stir as the muscles jumped under his fingers.

He pulled the t-shirt up off over Jared’s head, and Jared raised his arms obligingly to allow it. Jared was frankly pretty physically impressive, and after years spent trying not to get too caught up in his own attraction to Jared, Jensen finally really looked at what was waiting in front of him, the way he'd never allowed himself to look before.

His reverie was rudely interrupted by a suggestion to ‘take a picture, it’ll last longer,’ followed by his own t-shirt being pulled unceremoniously over his head.

Any complaint, though, was cut off by Jared’s mouth on his, and quickly forgotten. The feel of Jared’s naked skin against his made his cock twitch in his jeans and reminded him of the fact that they were both still _wearing_ jeans, and how that situation seriously needed rectifying.

He slipped his hands around and down to the front of Jared’s jeans, working the button-fly open. Pushing his hand inside, he found soft, damp material riding over hard, hot flesh.

Oh yeah – Jared was definitely big all over.

Jensen suddenly decided that he was done playing around, and sank to his knees, pulling Jared’s jeans down his thighs as he went.

“You don’t have to,” Jared managed, but his dick, rising obligingly to meet Jensen, told a different story.

“Shut up,” Jensen said, pulling Jared’s briefs down and exposing his large, hard cock to the air.

He licked his lips before taking it into his mouth. Jared was bigger than either Morgan or Steve, but even though Jensen had the experience to help him deal with that possibility, he didn’t want to try anything overly ambitious the first time. So he pulled off for a second, despite Jared’s groan of protest, and licked his palm before wrapping his hand around the base of Jared’s cock and sealing his lips over the head.

Jared felt very large and invasive and real and _his_ in Jensen’s mouth and Jensen bobbed his head slowly, dragging his lips up and down in the same rhythm as his fist.

It was good. Judging from Jared’s loud moans, it was really fucking good, but that wasn’t all Jensen wanted. If he was going to risk everything on this one encounter then he was going to take everything that was available, so he pulled off Jared’s dick again with an obscene-sounding long, wet suck.

Jared groaned, and the sound went straight to Jensen’s dick.

He grabbed Jared’s wrist and led him across the room to the bed.

“Get naked,” he said with a smile, because Jared managed to look both extraordinarily hot and faintly ridiculous with his pants and briefs down around his thighs and his hard cock sticking out.

Jared was unusually cooperative on this point, quickly stripping off his remaining clothes in record time.

Jensen did the same, before grabbing Jared by the wrist again and pushing him down on the bed.

“Fucking gorgeous,” Jared said in a rough voice, reaching for him.

“Pretty nice yourself,” Jensen responded looking down at Jared relaxed, naked and spread-eagled on the bed.

“Come here,” Jared said. “Let me…”

Jared didn’t finish outlining exactly what he wanted Jensen to let him do, but it didn’t really matter – Jensen would let him do anything, whatever it was – so Jensen got on the bed, straddling Jared’s thighs.

“Come _here_ ,” Jared said again, and grabbed Jensen’s arms to pull him down into another kiss.

Their bodies met as their mouths did, and Jensen rubbed gently up against Jared as he ran his fingers through his hair.

They broke free after a long time, flushed and panting.

Jensen moved off Jared and settled down beside him.

“Do you have any stuff?” he asked.

Jared looked a little blank, like he had no idea what Jensen was talking about.

“Condoms and lube, Jared,” Jensen explained patiently.

“Oh! Yes,” Jared rolled over to the nightstand and opened the drawer, which had condoms and lotion inside. Not the best lube, Jensen thought with a shrug, but it would definitely do.

He pushed Jared back onto the bed and climbed back on top of him, Jared’s hands went easily to his hips, steadying him, fitting perfectly on his skin, and Jensen felt a surge of satisfaction at how easily they fit. This was going to work so well – the sex would be amazing, Jensen was sure of it.

He ripped open the condom packet and jacked Jared’s cock for a few moments, enjoying the feel of it and smoothing the way for the condom. Then he slid the condom on and rubbed a generous amount of lotion on it.

Jared’s head fell back as Jensen positioned himself over Jared’s dick, but he looked back up again when Jensen began sinking down inch by very slow inch.

“Shouldn’t we have stretched you open first?” Jared asked from between gritted teeth, and Jensen shrugged as if he hadn’t just taken shameless advantage of Jared’s inexperience with gay sex.

“It’s fine, I’ll just go slow,” and it was fine, a whole lot more than fine, because the burn was nothing Jensen couldn’t handle and Jared was _in him_ , and there was no way Jensen was waiting any unnecessary extra minutes for that.

Jensen rocked slowly on Jared’s hips, feeling the burn and stretch. He watched Jared’s face carefully as he moved, shivering with distraction when he found the perfect angle to hit his prostate.

Jared groaned and arched his back as he pushed his hips up to meet Jensen. They worked in perfect synchronicity – moving as one as they had on so many operations they'd worked together – with an instinctive awareness of each other.

Jensen reached for his own dick as the rhythm intensified, but Jared grabbed his hands and held them, using them to lever his head up and pull Jensen forward for another kiss.

“I missed you,” Jared whispered against his lips. “So fucking much.”

“I missed you too,” Jensen replied. “Every goddamned day. I’m sorry.”

He kept moving, angling and squeezing until Jared let go of his hands and pulled Jensen's hips down, thrusting up hard as he came.

Jensen sat back and moved his hands to his dick again to finish off, but Jared stopped him again, helping him slide off and then laying him down on the bed.

“Let me,” he said, sliding down Jensen’s body to his groin.

Jared grinned up as he licked his lips, and sure, Jared could grin because he wasn’t the one who was about to _explode_ if he didn’t come soon.

“I’ve never done this before, so you’ll have to tell me how I’m doing,” Jared said.

“You don’t have to,” Jensen said, absolutely meaning it despite the obvious strain in his voice, echoing Jared’s earlier words. But Jared didn't pay any more attention to that than Jensen had either.

“Let me,” Jared repeated. “Let me show you how I feel.”

He took Jensen into his mouth, and while he was clearly inexperienced he was also smart. He'd learned something from Jensen already, and used his hands on the root of Jensen’s dick while he mouthed at the head, adding new technique of his own by moving his hands to gently cradle Jensen’s balls.

His mouth was soft but strong, working Jensen over carefully, _lovingly_ even, and as Jensen plummeted gratefully into orgasm, the promises Jared made with his body were so much easier to trust than any three little words.

***

_The future_

They were pinned down by heavy fire, but that was nothing new. They knew where the exits were and where the enemy was, and they’d done this a hundred times before. They’d do it a hundred times again.

Jensen checked his gun and slid a new clip into place. Jared was still messing around with his.

“Are you done?” Jensen asked. “Or do you need some more time to check your hair?”

“Do you need more time to check your glasses?” Jared replied, slamming the clip into place, finally. “I know we should look into getting you bifocals, but there’s no time for that now.”

“Shut up,” Jensen said, a little sensitive about the way his eyesight was declining as he got older.

Jared grinned and Jensen softened, never able to resist him. Morgan had drilled him again and again about the danger of having weaknesses, but Jensen was more than just the hired gun that Morgan had been, more than the killing machine Morgan had trained him to be.

He was a man, and he was more than his profession, and Jared as a weakness was a small price to pay for that.

Leaning closer, he gave Jared a quick kiss, before they both broke cover on the count of three.

***

The End

***

If you’d like to comment please feel free to do so here or on [this fic at livejournal where it was originally posted ](http://jasmasson.livejournal.com/98872.html) as you prefer.


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